Conversations on Online Learning - Audrey Watters: "(Student) Data is the New Oil: MOOCs, Metaphor, and Money"

Talk description: Education technology entrepreneurs frequently boast about the great insights about learning they are able to glean, thanks to the "unprecedented amounts" of data they're collecting from their users. Every keystroke. Every click. Every pause and rewind in a video lecture. Every homework submission. Every forum post. The promise of all the data gathering and data mining: better teaching and learning through technology. And perhaps we will see education transformed. But the claims about "big data" and education echo those made by the tech industry in general, and there is incredible investor interest in this story -- in funding data science oriented startups. This presentation will examine "student data as the new oil" -- the metaphor and the money behind education data and learning analytics as seen in MOOCs and other education technologies.
Audrey Watters, a leading freelance writer in the education field and author of the blog Hack Education, will present a talk entitled “(Student) Data is the New Oil: MOOCs, Metaphor, and Money.” The event is free and open to members of the Columbia community with a valid University ID.

October 16, 2013
3 pm to 4 pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus 203 Butler Library

Summer Update

Greetings from the Education Collaborative!  We hope that everyone is having a great summer.  We are very anxious to get started on planning for the upcoming school year.  Having learned more about SIPA students' interests in education from our survey last spring (see results here), we are excited to plan events related to a diverse range of education issues.  We are also looking forward to working with SIPA administrators and professors to incorporate education-related issues more fully into the SIPA curriculum.  It is going to be an exciting year!

Here are a few things to look forward to:

1)  We will be having weekly meeting this coming semester, dates and locations TBA.  In the meantime, if you have any ideas for events or other initiatives that you would like the Education Collaborative to pursue, please be in touch!  Email Sarah Begeman at shb2129@columbia.edu with any and all ideas.

2)  If you know of other student groups or organizations from around Columbia or elsewhere in New York who may be interested in collaborating with us for events, networking, or other initiatives, please let us know!

3)  We are very excited to grow our network by welcoming in new students!  We will be present at the SIPA Student Group Fair on Thursday, August 29 from 6-8:30 pm on Ancell Plaza (between the International Affairs and Law School buildings).  Representatives from the Education Collaborative will be there to answer questions and welcome new students!

4)  Current students- as you are thinking about what courses to take this coming semester, remember to check out our Education Course Listings, which list education-related courses from around Columbia.

Enjoy the rest of the summer, and we'll see you in the fall!

-The Education Collaborative Board

SIPA Education Survey Results

Thank you once again to everyone who took part in the Education Collaborative's survey in April.  The results are in, and as you can see, SIPA students are very interested in engaging with education issues and topics inside and out of the classroom.  We will use these survey results as we continue to work with the faculty and administration and SIPA as well as with other student groups to increase students' access to education-related coursework and programming.

In addition, remember to check out our Course Listings to learn more about education-related courses offered around Columbia!

2013 Board elections

We are conducting elections for our new Board soon. Here are the details for the upcoming elections for the Board of Education Collaborative:

• A list of positions on the Board and their responsibilities is given below.
• To stand for any of the listed positions please fill in and submit the following Google form by 6 pm, January 31st:

Every candidate can contest for a maximum of three positions.

• Electronic voting will start on February 1st and continue till February 4th midnight.
• There will be a kick-off meeting on February 4th between 1 and 2 pm for members to meet and get to know their candidates.
• The new Board will be announced on February 5th.

Click on "Read more" below to check the positions on the Board.

Education Collaborative Strategy 2013

The following document summarizes the main challenges identified by the 2012 board for 2013. We expect these bullets will help the 2013 board when framing their agenda for the year.

The document structure is:

1. Mission and Vision
2. Why education at SIPA
3. Gaps to address within SIPA
4. Gaps to address within the Columbia community

Click below on "Read more" to continue reading.

Follow up: Sandy School Supply Drive

During November, the Education Collaborative conducted a school supply drive for PS 329, one of the city schools relocated due to Sandy storm.

Thanks to your help, we were able to collect:

• Several boxes with school supplies.
• $379 in donations through our Amazon wishlist.
• $215 in cash.

Education Collaborative members delivered your donations to PS 329, which were received by Mrs. Salema Marbury (Principal) and Mrs. Lisa Lafontant (Assistant Principal). They thanked the Columbia University community for this support, and many teachers showed also great appreciation for our support.

Fortunately, the school came back to its building, although the first floor was still being repaired when we visited the school.

A big thank you to all of you!

Board meeting

Thursday Sept. 20th
5:00pm
Lehman Library, Group Study 3rd floor
RSVP

After our successful Kick-Off meeting last Monday, this Thursday we will have our first regular Board Meeting. If you are interested in discussing issues such as this semester goals and initiatives, please join us. In addition, please come if you would like to apply to one of the two open Board positions (Communications Co-Chair and Events Chair).

Events and announcements

Hi everyone!

We hope you all enjoyed your Spring Break. This week the Education Collaborative offers you opportunities to take part in one meeting and two events. Additionally, this update includes announcements and one "save the date" for April.

Update and February 28 meeting notes

Hi everyone!

Hope you've all had a nice weekend. Here's a quick EDU Collaborative update...

I. Outreach is getting underway, and we will be sending a Digest to our external network within the month, so please update here the Outreach spreadsheet with your contacts (non-SIPA students, faculty, NYC contacts, etc)

II. Upcoming events:

• March 22nd panel with the Law and Business schools, followed by an EDU Collaborative-sponsored Happy Hour. RSVP for the panel at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FPB2KBZ
• Brown Bag with Miguel Urquiola and Mark Ginsburg in April (3rd or 17th)
• Joint TC-NYU conference on April 13th

III. Next meeting on Tuesday, March 20th at 7pm

Please see the Shared Documents section (right column) for full meeting notes.

Have a great week and a relaxing Spring Break!

Coli

Update and February 13 meeting notes

February 13 meeting notes

 

Notes February 13 meeting.

Update

Hi everyone,

Hope you all are having a nice weekend! I just wanted to send you an update from our last meeting and let you know what's in the pipeline.

1. We received notification of funding from the UNSPWG, and we now have a budget of $250. This is more than most new student groups receive, so we have the UNSPWG to thank for their generosity!

2. Outreach is going to be key for our success. Cory and Jordan have already started a Google Doc with different sheets for us to record the contact info of Education Collaborative members (that's all of us!), other Columbia students, Columbia faculty, NYC contacts and International contacts. Please enter in your info, and the info of anyone else who would like to be part of our extended network.

The Google doc can be found here.

 

3. We will be starting an Education Collaborative Digest to send to our internal members AND external network. This will be one way of making ourselves known to the greater Columbia community and reaching out to more contacts and potential partners. So when you add people to the lists of extended networks on Cory and Jordan's Doc, please make sure that these people know they will be subscribed to this Digest. We will send an email out to them in advance as well.

 

4. We will plan at least one Brown Bag before the end of the semester. At our meeting, the possible topics for a Brown Bag included:

 

   1. Education marketization and its role in economic development;

   2. Education as it pertains to the Millennium Development Goals and affects genders differently;

   3. Worldwide social movements focused on education or initiated by participants

     within the education system (i.e., the student protests in Chile)

 

I will send out a Google Doc shortly asking for any other theme ideas you might have and who you know who might be willing to present.

 

5. The Society for International Education at Teachers College has contacted us about the possibility of partnering up with them and the International Education program at NYU to plan a day-long professional development workshop showcasing opportunities in international education. The workshop would most likely take place in April and include a few panels and a reception. Stay tuned for more info as this initiative takes shape.

New officers and projects for Spring 2012

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who came to our Education Collaborative meeting yesterday. It was very productive and we have lots to report on, such as newly elected officers, funding and future meetings, projects, Brown Bags and Happy Hours.

To start with, congrats to our newly elected officers!

President: Coli Clements
Secretary: Pablo Alfaro
Treasurer: Catalina Diez
Outreach Co-Chairs: Cory Fox and Jordan Brensinger
Academic Chair: Dara MacDonald

Funding:
Since the UNSPWG continues to be our parent-organization, they agreed to allocate some of their funds to us for the semester. We asked for $300, but the final amount has yet to be determined.

Future meetings:
From now on we will be holding meetings every other week. Our four options for meeting times are as follows: Monday @ 8pm; Tuesday @ 1pm; Tuesday @ 7pm; Thursday @ 1pm. I know we've asked you to use Doodle a lot, but please fill out this Doodle one more time so that we can gauge which time accommodates the most people.

http://www.doodle.com/hn2bz6yhbwwfuukz
Next steps:

This semester our main goals will be to expand our network and create thorough and robust lists of education-related courses, professors, student groups and institutions across Columbia. The Outreach and Academic Chairs will update us on this front as the semester moves along. 

We will also aim to put on two Brown Bags and host Happy Hours to continue to get to know each other and highlight the importance of an education community at Columbia. The Society for International Education at Teachers College has also expressed interest in co-sponsoring an event with us later in the semester.

For our Brown Bags, we would like to gather some input from all of you. What topics are you interested in? Who do you know (professors, educational practitioners, etc. in the community) who would be interested in speaking with us? We will send out a document on this shortly, but in the meantime, please respond to this email and let us know of your ideas!

Stay tuned for more soon!

Have a great weekend,

Coli

Education Collaborative Update

Hi everyone!

Please bear with this long but very informative email and be sure to
CLICK ON THE DOODLE at the end of the message.

The Education Collaborative had a great meeting last Friday.
Unfortunately, the Happy Hour didn't work out as planned, but we'll
keep you posted for the next gathering very soon.

As of right now, we have a name, a mission, potential positions for
group members and proposed projects for the semester and beyond. We're
also exploring possibilities for funding and/or creating our own group
for this next semester.

1.      Group title:
Education Collaborative

2.      Mission:
We are a community of students and professors united by a common
belief that education is fundamental to international and public
affairs. We aim to highlight the importance of education for human
development and develop a platform for collaboration between SIPA,
Columbia, and New York City to build on our diversity of experiences
and interests in education.

3.      Positions:
-Head Coordinator (**Once the group grows, this position may need to be split into two parts: an External Coordinator and an Internal Coordinator; for now, though, the responsibilities for the one position include organizing EDU Collaborative meetings, overseeing various activities, corresponding with SIPASA, UNSPWG and other SIPA groups, etc)
-Internal Communications Chair (Taking notes at meetings, sending out
emails, etc)
-External Communications Chair (Maintaining the blog, calendar,
resource sharing, etc - basically what Pablo has been doing already)
-Treasurer (Self-explanatory)
-Outreach Chair (**May require two people: reaching out to larger
Columbia community including TC, School of Social Work, etc, to build
up our network)
-Academic Chair (**Up for discussion: compiling group lists)

4.      Projects:
-Building up our network across Columbia (TC, Social Work, Law,
Business, etc) perhaps through Happy Hours, outreach, etc
-Identifying and compiling group lists of the following:
     Students from each school interested in education
     Education courses across Columbia (and how to cross-register)
     Education-oriented professors across Columbia
     Education-oriented institutes and centers across Columbia
     Education-oriented student groups across Columbia
-Brown bags/Working lunches
-(in the long term) A one- or two-day Education Forum bringing experts
from around the University and beyond to speak (if you'd like more
details on this Forum, email Coli)

If any of you who weren't able to attend the meeting have ideas for
other positions we should vote on or other projects we should
consider, please respond to this email! Otherwise, we will go ahead
with our plan for the next meeting as is.

We would like to schedule another meeting sometime next
week to vote on these positions. We will then decide on a
regular time for our group to meet so that our proposed projects can
move forward.

Now for the doodle...please let us know when you'll be free to meet!
See below:

http://www.doodle.com/7v63wnc5zw6ewxwx

And check out our Official Blog (We're ONLINE, thanks to Pablo!)

http://sipaec.blogspot.com

Thanks so much!!

SIPA Education Collaborative End of Semester Update

Hi Everyone!

   I apologize in advance for the length of this email.  However, we wanted to announce that between the meetings we held last week and today we have officially decided on a few things:

1. Name of the group - SIPA Education Collaborative.  After much debate, we decided this name best reflected the mission and atmosphere of our group.

2. Description of the group:
 We are a community of students and professors united by a common belief that education is fundamental to International and Public Affairs.  We aim to highlight the importance of education for human development and develop a platform for collaboration between SIPA, Columbia, and New York City to build on our diversity of experiences and interests in education.
While this description may not be 100% perfect, we thought it did an accurate job of reflecting the common thread among our ideas for the group while still being open to other possible initiatives (research, consulting, etc.).  We can definitely revisit the description after we see what initiatives emerge as being the core focus of our group.

3. Posts (Administrative Responsibilities):
There are three main categories of administrative responsibilities:
i) Co-coordinators - external coordinator (responsible for contact with UNSPWG, SIPASA, and any other SIPA student groups we may want to collaborate with in sponsoring activities, etc.) and internal coordinator (responsible for coordination within the larger group - keeping track of what various activity groups need, etc.)
ii) Treasurer
iii) Co-communication Chairs - external communication and outreach chair (This will likely involve outreach to TC, but really this person will be responsible for the blog, a calendar, resource sharing, etc. - basically everything Pablo has been doing) and internal communication chair/secretary (this person will be responsible for taking notes of meetings and sending out emails/posting decisions to the larger group, sending emails to the large group for meetings, etc.)

As soon as we come back in January we will make final decisions on people to fill these posts.  In the mean time, though, if you really want to fill any particular post, please email me back and let me know just so that we can get an idea of whether there will be any competition for the positions and decide from there how we should go about making decisions for filling them for the next semester. 

In the mean time, I believe Pablo has created a blog for the group and will be posting some items, gathering some information, etc. over break (please correct me if I'm wrong!).  We will also decide in January on what activities we will pursue next semester, who will be responsible for them, and what the broad but measurable 2nd semester goal for each activity will be.  Over break, if you want to do any work on a particular activity you are interested in the group taking on or if you want to send out an email with an idea for an activity in order to get an idea of group interest, feel free!!

And finally, thank you to everyone who took time out of these crazy last weeks of the semester to help make decisions for the future of this group! 

Good luck studying/writing!!  And have a terrific vacation! 


Cory

Take a minute to support the dual degree between SIPA and Teachers College

Hi members of the SIPA Education group,

Today's happy hour was a good moment to talk about the future of the group and other education-related topics, while drinking a good beer :)

Looking forward to see those of you that couldn't come in the next activities!

Please, remember that if you want to share events/activities with the group, you can find the members' contact details in our Google Doc http://bit.ly/sipaed and send us a mail.

In this email:

1) Take a minute to support the dual degree between SIPA and Teachers College

2) Still looking for interesting courses at TC? TOMORROW Thursday: Policy Course Advisement @TC

3) Panel “For‐Profit Schooling and the Politics of Education Reform in Chile”. Next Monday.

Content

1) Take a minute to support the dual degree between SIPA and Teachers College

• As we told you in a previous email, Jordan Brensinger (MIA 2013) has proposed SIPA to start a new dual degree with Teachers College.
• We know that if we want this idea to come true, the students (we) have to show interest and pressure.
• If you think this is an interesting idea, we invite you to take concrete action:
• Go to the Town Hall discussion board in Courseworks, look for Jordan's post under "Category: DUAL DEGREES" and add a message supporting it. Would be great to have the post with more messages. The discussion board will close this Friday.
  
• Also, you can go to the actual Town Hall to show your support: 6-8pm,Tuesday, December 6, 2011. 15th Floor IAB 1501.

2) Still looking for interesting courses at TC? Tomorrow Thursday: Policy Course Advisement @TC

We wanted to share with you an activity organized by the Policy Student Network @ Teachers College:

Policy Course Advisement

·    Want to know what policy courses are being offered next semester?

·    Looking for information about classes and professors?

·    Looking to share wisdom about classes and professors?

·    Got questions about classes outside of TC?

·    Just want a break from finals-stuff?

·    Wine?  Snacks?

Thursday, December 1, 2011

7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Horace Mann 144

Wine and light refreshments will be served.

3) Panel "“For‐Profit Schooling and the Politics of Education Reform in Chile”. Next Monday.

For those of you interested in privatization and vouchers: the panelists will discuss the scholarly and policy debate, the evidence, and the international experience. They will analyze the Chilean case, where the consequences are being widely debated.

Moderated by Susan Fuhrman, President of Teachers College Panelists:

• Gregory Elacqua, Director of the Institute of Public Policy at the School of Economics at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago‐Chile
• Henry Levin, William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Economics & Education at Teachers College
• Miguel Urquiola, Professor of Economics at the School of International and Public Affairs and Department of Economics, Columbia University

RSVP by Thursday, December 1st by email to paupachecoflanagan@gmail.com

Cheers,

Pablo.