New Lines for AI in Higher Ed, Summer 2024
“Let us not be afraid to outgrow old thoughts and ways, and dare to think on new lines as to the future of the work under our care.”— Jane Stanford, 1904
How to make AI work for higher education
By Matthew Rascoff, Vice Provost for Digital Education
A few months ago Chris Piech, assistant professor of computer science at Stanford, posted a co-authored research paper with the surprising result of a randomized controlled trial in a large online programming course he teaches: ChatGPT 4 reduced student engagement. Despite its contrarian finding, and its educational (and statistical) significance, the paper, which was shared on the scholarly commons OFS Preprints, received little fanfare. It didn’t fit the narrative of the current AI education hype cycle.
Boom and bust cycles have been part of capitalism since the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s, when a single bulb was more valuable than a Rembrandt. But these cycles are pernicious to education, where demand is constant, not cyclical. Ed tech is caught in between these two conflicting systems. It is largely funded by the same capital markets as the rest of the tech industry, in which the “IPO window” (the opportunity to take a company public) opens and closes based on macroeconomics. But its users are students and teachers, whose needs don’t rise and fall with stock prices and interest rates. Education requires reliable infrastructure, modern tools, and support for the perpetual challenges of learning and teaching: healthy, stable nutrition, not famine and feast. As schools have become more reliant on ed tech, the mismatch between the way it is financed and developed, and the importance of its products, has magnified.
Ed tech decision-makers are faced with the task of navigating between the naive embrace of shiny new objects and the disappointment and cynicism that follow when startups and their products don’t work out as hoped. And the stakes aren’t just financial: Millions of children and young adults are struggling to overcome pandemic learning loss. Education technology will shape the capabilities and productivity of the next generation.
That challenge was a subject at a June 17 meeting at the White House that I attended.
Stanford, Google, and community colleges post playbook to help boost student job prospects
Many community college students want to find work in the tech sector, but it’s hard to land that first job. Now a team from Stanford Digital Education (SDE), Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC), and Google has published a playbook aiming to support students’ transitions to careers in technology.
At the center of this effort lies the Google Career Certificate in Data Analytics, which enables learners to earn a certificate upon successfully completing a series of online courses created by Google. The new publication, Empowering Community Colleges: A Playbook for Integrating Google's Data Analytics Certificate into Curriculum, is intended to help community college faculty to provide their students with opportunities to obtain the certificate as part of their community college education.
“While community colleges do amazing work preparing their students for careers and transfer to four-year colleges, employers want to know that applicants have attained specific skills needed for data analytics jobs,” said Michael Acedo of Stanford Digital Education, who led the project to produce the playbook. “My colleagues and I hope the playbook makes it easier for these schools to incorporate certification into their programs, underscoring that their students’ education is attuned to industry requirements.”
L.A. high school students drawn to course on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Lerone A. Martin, the faculty director for Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, harbored any doubts about teaching his popular undergraduate course via the Internet to high schoolers in Los Angeles, they vanished when the results of a student survey arrived midway through the semester.
When asked about the class, Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom, three of the students answered:
- “I've had great discussions and learned so much more about Malcolm X and MLK than I've learned over my entire life. It's very interesting.”
- “I love this class. It's almost like this is what my school was missing, a course actually dedicated to the color of people that attend my school.”
- “My favorite parts are seeing Prof. Martin being passionate, telling us these great people's stories that are not so much in the spotlight. I feel that I relate more with Malcolm and Martin at this point.”
Martin, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is among the first faculty members to work with Stanford Digital Education to adapt a Stanford undergraduate course for a younger group of learners. His course, which more than 90 Stanford students took a year ago, is now underway in classrooms in seven Title I high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (Schools qualify as Title I if 40 percent or more of students come from low-income households.)
Happy cycling to Stanford Spokes!
Gear? Check.
Food? Check.
Lesson plans? CHECK!!!!!
The 2024 Stanford Spokes team left campus June 18 on a bike trek to Washington, D.C. As part of the ride, they are bringing dynamic STEM workshops to pre-K students through 12th graders in 10 states, sharing a love of learning — and biking. Stanford Digital Education is the university sponsor for this effort to bring educational opportunities to learners far from the Stanford campus. Meet the team and follow them on Instagram.
Read how the Spokes will encourage students to think like scientists
National summit of digital education leaders identifies new ways to promote deeper learning
Declining social mobility, fracturing civil discourse, skyrocketing tuition, the end of affirmative action, and an epidemic of loneliness — these are “interlocking crises” threatening American higher education, Stanford Vice Provost for Digital Education Matthew Rascoff said in his opening remarks at a gathering of some 80 university and college digital education leaders. With public trust in colleges and universities plummeting, he proposed that digital innovations should attempt to earn it back by addressing fundamental challenges in society.
Rascoff invited his listeners to think of digital education, with its tools and technologies, as relating deeply to universities’ reasons for being. “We need to recommit digital education to a mission-driven strategy that helps recover the democratic purposes of higher education.”
This call underscored the theme of the March 27-28 Digital Learning Summit, which drew teams to Stanford from online learning units at 20 institutions across the country, including small private colleges, Ivy League universities, and state flagships.
The event was co-sponsored by Stanford Digital Education and Harvesting Academic Innovation for Learners, or HAIL, a network of innovation leaders in higher education.
‘It proves I can do anything I put my mind to’
Those were the words of one of the 10 Niagara Falls High School students who were honored at a March 14 school board meeting for passing the same undergraduate computer science course that hundreds of Stanford undergraduates have taken over the past three decades.
CS 105: Introduction to Computers is a challenging course with a heavy workload. Students learn CSS and HTML coding, study the programming language Python, are taught the fundamentals of computer security and privacy, and build their own websites as the final project. While a typical undergraduate course at Stanford is three or four credits, this one is worth five.
At NFHS, the course spanned six months. Students met in a classroom after school under the direction of teacher Danielle DePalma. While there, they logged onto laptops to get personalized lessons via Zoom from Stanford teaching fellows. At home and in class, they would watch lecture videos by the course creator, Patrick Young, a lecturer in the Stanford Computer Science Department. Students had weekly assignments to complete, and if they needed help, they could ask the Stanford teaching fellows questions during online office hours.
Our team develops tool to enhance equity in project management
By Paloma Gutierrez, Stanford Digital Education student fellow
Last year I gladly chose to join Stanford Digital Education (SDE) as a student fellow because of its focus on making education accessible to all with a focus on overcoming intersectional barriers. To ensure that the office adheres to that commitment in its work, Cindy Berhtram, director of project strategy and operations, asked me to work with her and another colleague to develop a project management framework: the SDE Equity Checklist. The goal, she told me, was to keep us accountable to our values and to our stakeholders.
The checklist is now up and being used by our team, and we’re looking to share it more widely. I was pleased that Cindy and I could give a presentation about it at the Drivers of Educational Technology/California Higher Education Conference, which drew some 200 leaders in education technology from the state’s colleges and universities, as well as from industry. Our talk, “Embedding Equity in Digital Education: a Comprehensive Project Management Framework,” fit right in with a theme of the gathering — diversity, equity, and inclusion — and was well received.
We thought it would be good to share the key points in our presentation on the SDE website, encouraging others to tap into this resource.
Our impact
Visit our "Impacts and progress" page to see how we are building and enhancing digital pathways to Stanford.
Current projects
- Academic Innovation for the Public Good book series
- Code in Place at community colleges
- Dual enrollment courses for high school students
- Grow with Google professional development for community college faculty
- Support for student initiatives
- Working Learners Initiative for Stanford's current and potential employees
In the media
Recent stories involving Stanford Digital Education.
South Texas College inspires Stanford University to implement Google IT certificate, June 25, 2024
BioE JEDI Corner interview with Erik Brown, Stanford Bioengineering, June 6, 2024
Colleges reinstating the ACT/SAT should add a program like this too, Forbes, May 23, 2024
Topeka High students' critical thinking draws visit from Stanford professor, Topeka Capital-Journal, May 15, 2024
ICYMI: A compelling conversation
Watch a recording of the May 15 Academic Innovation for the Public Good author interview.
Minu Ipe, vice chair and managing director of the University Design Institute at Arizona State University, interviewed co-authors Bryan Penprase, vice president for sponsored research and external academic relations at Soka University, and Noah Pickus, associate provost at Duke University, about their new book, The New Global Universities: Reinventing Education in the 21st Century. View the recording and transcript of their conversation.
Calendar
July 22-24
UPCEA Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable (SOLA + R) and Distance Teaching and Learning (DT&L) Conference. Professionals and thought leaders will come together to explore innovative strategies, share best practices, and envision the future of online education. Register to attend in person or online.
August 2
Learning Design and Technology Expo. Each summer, Learning Design and Technology students at Stanford Graduate School of Education showcase their master’s projects at a lively event that draws education and tech professionals, potential investors, and curious community members. Free and open to the public; 4 to 6 p.m, Center for Educational Research at Stanford.
August 27
Showcase Webinar: AI…Friend or Foe? Institutional and industry leaders from Rutgers, the University of Rhode Island, and Educause will consider how higher education can adapt and transform to meet an AI-infused future. Register for 9 a.m. PT.
August 29
InnovateED: Innovations in Education Technology with Stanford University. Stanford Medicine’s virtual conference dedicated to best practices in innovation and technology is oriented toward educators, instructional designers, administrators, continuing education and continuing medical education professionals, online program developers, and technology experts. Register for 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT.
September 10
CHLOE 9: The Changing Landscape of Online Education. In this EDUCAUSE webinar, researchers discuss the CHLOE 9 survey. Conducted in 2024, the survey provides data and insights related to third party servicers (TPSs) and online program managers (OPMs), institutional priorities for online growth, online pricing and cost models, and AI use and policies. Register for noon PT.
October 2
Deploying AI in Organizations and Society. A seminar with Angela Aristidou, sponsored by Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Aristidou’s research demonstrates how AI-driven cross-sector partnerships reshape established partnership paradigms and collaboration models and generate new governance mechanisms and emerging business models. Register for noon PT (online and in person).
October 8-11
Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) Ethnic Studies Conference. The annual conference brings together local, national, and international scholars to share their research and to elevate the work of Stanford Graduate School of Education faculty and students. Free and open to the public: noon to 1 p.m. PT, October 8-9 (virtual); 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. PT, Oct. 10-11 (in person, Center for Educational Research at Stanford).
October 9-11
Emerging Pedagogies Summit: Designing and Scaling Transformative Learning for All. Organized and hosted on the Duke University campus by Duke Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education, this summit will raise awareness of new teaching and learning ideas and practices while generating interest for applied research in emerging pedagogies. Register.
Career Opportunities
Digital Learning Manager
Badavas Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
Bentley University
Education Research Coordinator
Back Academic Development Lab
Stanford Graduate School of Education
Lead Online Instructional Designer
University Information Technology Services
Indiana University
Social Media Specialist
Center for Academic Innovation
University of Michigan
Student Learning Specialist, STEM Equity Initiatives
Center for Teaching and Learning
Stanford University
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