eLearning News

Litigating Workplace Safety and Health Disputes

2012-02-09T01:34:00.005-08:00

Attorney Michael Taylor offers a tutorial to help you understand the litigation process required when your employer contests an OSHA citation before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Despite the fact that the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, many employers still do not fully understand the make-up of the OSHRC, the process for litigating OSHA citations and the reasons why they might want to litigate citations, proposed penalties and proposed abatements. Without this knowledge, employers cannot effectively evaluate their decision to litigate.

The OSHRC is the independent federal agency that adjudicates workplace safety and health disputes between OSHA and private industry. In the early 1970s, members of Congress feared that allowing one federal agency to set standards and regulations, conduct inspections and enforce the standards and regulations would be unfair to the regulated community, so the OSHRC was created.

As Senator Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., the author of the amendment to create OSHRC, artfully stated: “I feel very strongly that a great element of confidence will be restored in how this very new and very wide-ranging piece of legislation [the Occupational Safety and Health Act]will be administered if the power to adjudicate violations is in the hands of an autonomous body, more than one man, and more than in the Department of Labor itself. … We have a difficult piece of legislation reaching the whole of American business, involving millions of employees and tens of thousands of employers. This will give them a greater measure of confidence.”

Staffing for the OSHRC

The administrative law judges of the OSHRC perform, among other things, the duties of ruling on motions, making findings of fact and conclusions of law. Currently, there are offices in Washington, D.C. (headquarters),
Atlanta and Denver.

In addition to the judges, the OSHRC has a chairman and two commissioners who are located in the Washington office and are otherwise known as the supreme court of workplace safety and health law. They are confirmed by the United States Senate, and they serve a 6-year interval term at the pleasure of the president of the United States.

The Office of the General Counsel provides legal support to the chairman and the two commissioners. This office provides, among other things, legal advice to the members of the OSHRC regarding Petitions for Interlocutory Review and Petitions for Discretionary Review. In general, a Petition for Interlocutory Review is a request to rule on an issue before a trial has ended. A Petition for Discretionary Review is a request to rule on an issue after a trial has ended.

Why Litigiate?

There are many reasons why an employer may litigate citations, proposed penalties and proposed abatements.

First, an employer may litigate in response to administrative liability. Under the OSH Act, 29 C.F.R. § 651 et seq., a citation may be characterized as serious, willful, repeat or failure to abate. Case law also dictates that OSHA may issue a per instance or per employee penalty if the language in the standard or regulation authorizes such penalty. This is otherwise known as an “egregious violation.”

A serious violation has a maximum penalty of $7,000, a willful or repeat violation has a maximum penalty of $70,000 and a failure-to-abate violation has a maximum penalty of $7,000 per day. An egregious violation may be characterized as willful and could carry the maximum penalty of $70,000. An employer may receive, for example, 10 proposed willful violations for allegedly failing to train 10 employees. Each proposed willful violation may carry the maximum penalty of $70,000 for a total proposed penalty of $700,000.

An employer may litigate in response to the existing proposed characterizations and penalties because they are grave. If the existing proposed characterizations and penalties are not grave, an employer still might want to litigate to minimize the risk of receiving grave characterizations and penalties in the future.

An employer does not have to carry the case to trial in order to minimize the risk. In fact, a substantial portion of the contested cases settle and do not make it to a trial. An employer can minimize the risk through settlement negotiations before, during and after discovery.

Second, an employer may litigate to minimize the risk of civil liability. Approximately 32 states authorize the use of OSHA standards and citations as evidence of negligence at trial, and approximately 14 states authorize the use of OSHA standards and citations as negligence per se at trial.

Regarding the former, an employer would still be allowed to argue that it did not owe the plaintiff a duty of care nor did it breach a duty of care, the first two elements needed to establish a negligence cause of action. Regarding the latter, an employer would be prohibited from presenting a defense that it did not owe the plaintiff a duty of care nor did it breach a duty of care. In essence, an employer would only be able to present a defense regarding causation and damages, the last two elements needed to establish a negligence cause of action. These issues may arise only if an employee can get out of the state workers’ compensation exclusivity provisions, or the employee is not an employee of the employer. Many experienced plaintiff counsel will allow OSHA to do a significant portion of the legwork, and then use the OSHA case in the civil case.

Third, an employer may litigate in order to avoid criminal liability in the future. Section 17(e) of the OSH Act states that if an employer willfully violated the law and the violation caused the death to an employee, that employer shall be guilty of a misdemeanor with a maximum of 6 months in prison. Under the Criminal Fine Enforcement Act, an individual can receive a maximum criminal penalty of $250,000, and the organization can receive a maximum criminal penalty of $500,000. The United States Department of Justice handles the criminal prosecution. There may be state criminal prosecution as well. Typically, administrative litigation is stayed pending the criminal prosecution.

Fourth, an employer may litigate in order to avoid abatement. Abatement can be extremely expensive and have minimal or no safety or health benefit. When evaluating the potential cost, employers should analyze the initial and ongoing capital and labor costs needed in order to implement the abatement. When evaluating the potential safety or health benefit, employers should consult with internal or external experts. Abatement costs often are a key factor in deciding whether to proceed with administrative litigation.

Fifth, an employer may litigate because OSHA has issued a negative press release. Currently, OSHA has been issuing negative press releases with very harsh language shortly after issuing citations and proposed penalties, but prior to employers defending themselves during litigation. Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, calls such press releases “regulation by shaming” and asserts that press releases can be “very effective.”

OSHA Administrator Dr. David Michaels calls the agency’s negative press releases “regulation by shaming.”

A negative press release can damage an employer’s relationships with current customers and employees as well as the employer’s ability to obtain relationships with potential customers. Negative press also can damage an employer’s reputation within the local community. During settlement negotiations, an employer may want to request that any negative press releases be removed from the Internet; otherwise, the press release will live forever.

Sixth, an employer may litigate to minimize the risk of OSHA conducting a follow-up inspection. In general, history and experience indicate that employers who tend to roll over after receiving significant citations and notifications of proposed penalties often receive more follow-up inspections (and therefore more citations and notifications of proposed penalties) than employers who politely push-back. It is a misperception in the regulated community that if an employer accepts the citations and pays the penalties as proposed, OSHA will not come back to the worksite for a follow-up inspection. History and experience indicate that employers who tend to fight everything at no cost often find themselves having repeated visits from OSHA.

Seventh, an employer may litigate to get out of the Severe Violator Enforcement Program. Certain criteria must be met before an employer can be put in the program. Once an employer is in the program, OSHA may conduct nationwide inspections of the employer at the same time or over a certain period of time. This can pose a significant risk to an employer and cause major business interruptions. There is no way to get out of the program unless an employer litigates.

Eighth, an employer may litigate to eliminate an increase in workers’ compensation costs. Several states have statutes or regulations that authorize the increase in workers’ compensation payments based on safety or health violations. The commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, requires workers’ compensation payments to be doubled when an employee “is injured by reason of serious and willful misconduct of an employer.”

Ninth, an employer may litigate to eliminate the use of citations as leverage in collective bargaining process. Many unions use citations and penalties as leverage in the collective bargaining process in attempt to force an employer to agree to develop and implement other things related to safety or health in the workplace. Ignoring the fact that an employer has already abated the citation item, unions nevertheless try to use the citations as an indication that the worksite is dangerous and therefore in need of serious safety or health improvements.

Finally, an employer may want to litigate because it has pride in its workplace safety and health program. In this regard, many employers will litigate because the cited standard or regulation does not apply to them, they did not violate the terms of the cited standard or regulation, no employee was exposed to alleged violation or no one in management knew of the alleged violation. They take pride in the fact that their written program contains safety and health rules beyond what is required in a standard or regulation; they effectively communicate those rules to employees; they take affirmative steps to discover violations of the rules through internal and external auditing; and they discipline employees accordingly when they discover violations of the rules.

Reasons to Litigate
➤The existing proposed characterizations and penalties are grave and characterized as willful, repeat or egregious.
➤To minimize the risk of civil liability.
➤To avoid criminal liability in the future.
➤To avoid the costs and/or business disruption associated with abatement.
➤To force OSHA to recall a negative press release.
➤To minimize the risk of follow-up OSHA inspections.
➤To avoid being placed in the Severe Violator Enforcement Program.
➤To eliminate an increase in workers’ compensation premiums.
➤To eliminate the use of citations as leverage in the collective bargaining process.
➤The cited standard or regulation does not apply, the employer did not violate the terms of the cited standard or regulation, no employee was exposed to alleged violation or no one in management knew of the alleged violation.

The Litigation Process

Pursuant to section 9(a) of the OSH Act, an employer has 15 working days from the receipt of the citations and notification of proposed penalties to file a notice of contest with OSHA. In general, an employer loses its rights to challenge the validity of the citations and notification of proposed penalty if the notice of contest is not filed within the 15-day period. The 15-day period does not give an employer a significant amount of time to evaluate the impact of the citations and notification of proposed penalty. That is why it is very important for an employer to understand in advance why it may want to litigate.

During the 15-day period, an employer has the right to schedule an informal conference with OSHA Training. During the informal conference, OSHA may reduce the total proposed penalty by a few dollars and re-characterize a citation item from serious to an other-than-serious violation. In general, OSHA does not make significant concessions at this stage in the process. After receipt of the notice of contest, OSHA has 15 working days to forward the notice of contest to the OSHRC for docketing. The OSHRC assigns a docket number to the notice of contest. This starts the formal litigation process.

There are two types of trial proceedings, simplified and conventional. A case qualifies for simplified proceedings if:
➤ There are relatively few citation items;
➤ The aggregate penalty is not more than $20,000;
➤ There are no allegations of willful or repeat violation;
➤ There are no fatalities;
➤ A hearing is expected to take less than 2 days; or
➤ The case involves a small employer.

A motion to remove the case from simplified proceedings must show good cause for removal. A joint motion, however, does not require a showing of good cause. In general, simplified proceedings involve the waiver of pleadings, minimal discovery and a less formal trial. Very few cases in Simplified Proceedings go to trial.

A conventional proceeding involves pleadings, discovery and a formal trial. If the proposed penalty is $100,000 or greater, the chief administrative law judge must assign a settlement judge (not the trial judge), and the parties are required to attend a settlement conference. Typically, the settlement conference is held after discovery is complete. Some settlement judges require the parties to submit a position paper that explains the strengths and weaknesses of their case and what it will take to actually settle the case and will use the information to try to persuade each party to reach a middle ground. Other settlement judges do not require a position paper and take a more hands-off approach. Experience indicates that the latter type of settlement judge tends to be less successful in resolving the case.

Very few cases actually proceed to trial. When a case actually settles depends, for the most part, on the attorney representing OSHA. Some attorneys for OSHA attempt to initiate settlement discussions early in the case after receiving the inspection file. Some attorneys for OSHA only will talk settlement after discovery is complete because it is not until after discovery is complete that counsel on both sides fully can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their case and advise their clients where a middle ground might be reached. Some attorneys for OSHA will only talk settlement at the eve of trial. This is designed, for the most part, to gain the most leverage as possible.

Employers must be prepared in the event that the case does not settle. This includes drafting a pre-hearing statement, preparing fact and expert witnesses for examination and assembling exhibits to be used at trial.

After the trial is completed, the administrative law judge will issue a written decision with findings of fact and conclusions of law. The administrative law judge either will affirm, modify or vacate the citations, characterizations or proposed penalties. The written decision becomes a final order 30 days from the date of docketing unless one of the parties files a Petition for Discretionary Review and the petition is granted.

If the Petition for Discretionary Review is granted, the parties will be asked to file briefs and will be given time to respond. Oral arguments may be requested, but that is rare and takes place only when there is a significant issue that affects the regulated community as a whole.

After reviewing the briefs, and oral argument if heard, the chairman and commissioners will issue a written decision. A party has 60 days from the date of the final order to file an appeal with the appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals. An employer is authorized to file an appeal in the circuit in which the violation is alleged to have occurred, where the employer has its principle office or in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. OSHA is authorized to file an appeal in the circuit in which the violation is alleged to have occurred or where the employer has its principle office, but not in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

If the appeals court reverses an OSHRC decision, the administrative law judges are bound to follow the legal precedent in the OSHRC decision, not the legal precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals decision.

Michael T. Taylor, Esq., is counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. He focuses on all aspects of occupational safety and health law. He represents employers and trade associations during federal and state OSHA enforcement litigation and rulemaking proceedings. He also provides OSHA inspection counseling, safety and health compliance counseling, catastrophe management, safety and health audits, safety and health due diligence reviews and whistleblower representation for clients. In addition, he represents employers and trade associations in a wide range of industries. He previously served as acting general counsel of the OSHRC. He can be reached at michael.taylor@pillsburylaw.com or 202-663-8041.

HIPAA Compliance: 6 Audit Questions (and Answers) for Covered Entities

2012-02-09T01:34:00.003-08:00

Late last year, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee challenged regulators to step up enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act:

“… the Subcommittee made clear that the [Office for Civil Rights’] efforts fell far short of its expectations, pointing out that, of tens of thousands of Hipaa Compliance received by OCR since 2003, the agency has levied only one formal civil monetary penalty and has settled only six other cases for monetary amounts…

The Director of OCR, Leon Rodriguez, responded … that the agency intends to put its fining authority to good use, stating ‘the real frontier is in our leveraging these new, stiff penalties that we have under the HITECH statute and expanding our utilization of those penalties’ to promote compliance.” (OCR Begins HIPAA Audits Under the Watchful Eye of Congress by Poyner Spruill LLP)
Accordingly, the OCR has begun to audit organizations that are required to comply with HIPAA Rules. For your reference, here are six questions and answers regarding the 150 audits they are planning for 2012:

1. What are regulators looking for?

“OCR has presented the audit pilot program as a ‘compliance improvement activity’ aimed at enabling OCR to better understand compliance efforts, additional types of technical assistance that would be useful, and the effectiveness of various corrective actions. However, covered entities should be mindful that if an audit reveals a serious compliance issue, OCR may initiate a compliance review to address the problem.” (HIPAA Privacy and Security Audit Program Begins This Month by Morgan Lewis)

2. Who will be audited?

“OCR has indicated that covered entities will be the focus of the initial round of audits. ‘Covered entities’ include: (1) health care providers such as doctors, clinics, nursing homes, pharmacies, etc., that transmit any information in electronic form in connection with transactions for which DHHS has adopted a standard; (2) health plans such as health insurance companies, HMOs and company-sponsored group health plans (e.g., major medical, dental, vision and health flexible spending accounts); and (3) health care clearinghouses.” (Office of Civil Rights to Conduct HIPAA Compliance Audits by Snell & Wilmer L.L.P.)

3. How are the audits structured?

“Each audit … will consist of interviews with leadership and key personnel (e.g., Privacy Officer, CIO, medical records department director), an inspection of operations with respect to privacy and security, and an assessment of compliance with HIPAA privacy and security regulations and the organization’s HIPAA policies.” (Audits for Compliance with HIPAA Privacy and Security Requirements Are on the Way - Are You Ready? by Thompson Coburn LLP)

4. How long will the audits take?

“OCR expects that an audit will typically last about 30 days. OCR’s contract auditor, KPMG, will typically be on site for 3 to 10 days of the audit, depending on the complexity of the systems involved.” (OCR Launches HIPAA Audit Program by Warner Norcross & Judd)

5. How likely is an audit?

“Given the large number of potential targets and the small sample size, it is unlikely that any particular HIPAA covered entity would be subject to this round of audits. However, the fact that OCR is commencing these audits with such fanfare is a strong indicator that HIPAA compliance is clearly on the radar of the regulatory agency. (HITECH’s Much-Anticipated HIPAA Audits Announced; 150 Unlucky Entities Will Soon Learn Their Fate by Jackson Walker)

6. How can covered entities prepare?

- Step up employee training:

“Keep in mind that HIPAA mandates training of individuals who have access to protected health information. Failure to train (and to properly document training) could result in significant liability.” (HHS Announces Immediate HIPAA Audit Initiative by Constangy, Brooks & Smith, LLP)

- Complete and compile the necessary paperwork:

“OCR expects covered entities and business associates who are the subject of the audit to provide requested information within 10 business days of the request for information. Such information will include, at minimum, documentation of their privacy and security compliance efforts (e.g. policies, forms, notices, training materials, etc.).” (OCR Publishes its HIPAA Audit Protocol: Focus to be on Data Gathering and Best Practices by Ober|Kaler)

- Conduct a security risk assessment to identify weaknesses in their procedures:

“Accordingly, it would be prudent for covered entities to revisit their policies and procedures for compliance with the Standards and ensure that they have completed and documented at least one security risk assessment consistent with the HIPAA security standards.” (OCR Rolls Out HIPAA Audit Program by McDermott Will & Emery)

- Be prepared to respond promptly to information requests:

“When a covered entity is selected for an audit, HHS will notify the covered entity in writing. The notification letter will introduce KPMG as the auditor, explain the audit process and set out the auditor’s initial document and information requests. It will also specify how and when to return the requested information to the auditor. HHS expects covered entities to provide requested information within 10 business days of the request.” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Announces Details of New HIPAA Audit Program by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP)

- Prepare employees who will speak to auditors:

“OCR will expect you to know which individuals in your organization can speak to each aspect of HIPAA implementation. You should make a list of these people now and ask them the kinds of questions OCR might pose.” (Audits Heat Up HIPAA Liability by Poyner Spruill LLP)

- Identify “high-impact” vulnerabilities before the audit:

“’High impact’ vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities that may (1) result in the highly costly loss of major tangible assets or resources; (2) significantly violate, harm, or impede an organization’s mission, reputation, or interest; or (3) result in human death or serious injury.” (The HIPAA Auditors Are Coming. Are You Ready? by Ropes & Gray LLP)

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/xTvFU

mHealth Challenges Around Privacy and HIPAA

2012-02-09T01:34:00.001-08:00

Emerging technologies are beginning to blur the traditional, clear distinctions around privacy and health data – this is especially true with mobile health (mHealth) solutions. Those involved in regulatory circles are trying to develop a cohesive framework that will encourage innovation, while at the same time protect consumer privacy.

A little background…
General consumer privacy around Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is addressed by a set of rules that affect everyone. At the federal level, PII is defined in certain standards (NIST SP 800-122), and protects confidentiality of PII in information systems from inappropriate access and disclosure. Some types of personal identification numbers, such as social security numbers or bank account numbers, are particularly sensitive (can be used to commit identity theft and steal money from bank accounts). Best-practices, particularly using Internet banking products, focus on protecting this kind of information.

Health information has an additional layer of regulation – HIPAA protects Personal Health Information (PHI) from being disclosed without a patient’s consent. HIPAA privacy and security was initially defined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and revised in the 2009 HITECH portion of ARRA (the same legislation that enacted the federal EHR Incentive Program, or “meaningful use”).

HIPAA defines “covered entities” (CEs) – health care providers (including doctors, hospitals and laboratories), insurers, and certain kinds of intermediaries. It also covers “business associates,” who manage PHI on behalf of CEs, and requires that Business Associate Agreements be in place to codify that the PHI is managed in a way that maintains security and privacy.

Consumer-generated health information vs. PHI
We are seeing an explosion of consumer-generated health data on the Internet, as well as in the mobile app space. A myriad of sites offer tools to help individuals track various health-related statistics, and perhaps share them socially with their friends. Things like pedometers or FitBit devices help track healthy walking and activity. Self-entered calorie counters help manage eating habits. In fact, a whole Quantified Self movement is emerging where self-tracking tools are believed to be an important feedback loop that helps enthusiasts improve their health status.

Such consumer-originated data, even though it is “health data,” is not PHI as covered by HIPAA. No HIPAA-defined CE holds this data. It is PII, and is covered by general privacy rules about that, but it is not PHI.

Now when that health data is shared with a CE – with a doctor, hospital, insurance plan, or other HIPAA-defined CE – then it becomes PHI. From the consumer side, the self-created data can be shred with anyone that individual wants – even posted on Facebook, if desired. However, the data that is shared with the doctor is PHI, and the doctor cannot share it with anyone else without the patient’s consent.

This kind of distinction makes the security requirements around data sharing a little asymmetrical. If a consumer wishes to disclose data to someone else, it can be done in a less-secured way – a regular email (which is not secure enough to meet HIPAA requirements) can state “my blood sugar this morning was 103!” and can be sent to a friend, or whomever. Sending such an email to one’s doctor, however, is a little more dicey – the doctor is a HIPAA-defined CE, and receipt of such an email would need to be protected once it is received (it becomes PHI on the doctor’s end). Better to use a secure way, such as a secure web-mail portal requiring login and password, for sending that kind of information – that way the doctor won’t need to secure the received message manually and destroy the original unsecured message.

Communication from a doctor to a patient is PHI, given that the context of the communication implies a therapeutic relationship – it thus needs to be secured. If a doctor wants to tell a patient “your blood sugar this morning was 103,” then that message needs to be protected in a way consistent with HIPAA security (a secure message, not an unencrypted email).

Where it gets fuzzy
A number of mHealth applications are emerging that bridge the gap between consumer-generated simple health data and PHI. For example, let’s consider a potential application that prompts people on maintenance medications dose-taking – it will create an alert that says “take your medication.” For the sake of example, let’s say that this smartphone app also collects some information from the patient – questions are asked like “did you take your med?” and “if not, why not?”. Or even, “would you like to see some information on alternatives?” (and render ads if answered “yes”) – or maybe not even ask for permission and offer ads for alternatives anyway.

If such a postulated app were generally available directly to the consumer, downloaded by the consumer, and used to collect one’s own health data, then it would simply be consumer-based health data – even if the data is associated with a specific cell phone number (not technically PII).

However, if that same app were “prescribed” by a HIPAA-defined CE (such as a doctor, an insurance company, or an independent pharmacy drugstore), then a therapeutic relationship is implied. If the app were designed to send that data back to its originator – back to the insurance company, or the doctor, or the retail pharmacy – then the sent-back data is PHI, and needs to be protected at HIPAA-security levels. Further, the patient needs to be able to opt-in about whether the data can/should be sent back to the CE – keeping the data oneself maintains it as simple “consumer health data” but sending it back to a CE makes it PHI.

Conclusions
Emerging technology dances the line between consumer health data and PHI. The HIPAA implications of such technology should not be feared – only taken into account when designing such systems.

When the distinction between consumer health data and PHI is clear, then the levels of security and permission that are appropriate can be built into these new products. Innovation in the mHealth space should be encouraged – after all, dramatic advances in the health of the country can emerge from such new technology. It needs to be done right, however. This is an area where early consultation around HIPAA and data privacy and security would certainly be worthwhile. We will likely see the emergence of such consultative services more and more as this new field of technology evolves.

Read more here.

Health attorney: Google's new privacy policy does not violate HIPAA

2012-02-09T01:33:00.001-08:00

Could Google's new privacy policy violate of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act? That's the concern of several members of Congress, who late last week discussed their worries with Google Director of Public Policy Pablo Chavez and Michael Yang, the company's attorney, according to an article on Search Engine Land.

In a nutshell, the new policy combines all of Google's privacy policies, ultimately enabling it to share user information across services. Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calf.), one of the meetings attendees, said in an interview with USA Today's Technology Live blog that such sharing could create a Hipaa Compliance violation under certain circumstances.

Bono Mack talks about a hypothetical situation in which a user performs a search for cervical cancer using Google, but forget to log out, causing him or her to be tracked across other products.

"That's a violation of HIPAA," she says. "We've gone to great lengths in our society to protect people's medical information."

Healthcare attorney and consultant David Harlow, author of HealthBlawg, disagrees with Bono Mack's assessment on a number of different levels.

"I don't see the change in Google's privacy policy as leading to the erosion of protected health information under HIPAA," Harlow said in an interview with FierceHealthIT. "If you search for cervical cancer and Google shares that information across platforms, that doesn't violate HIPAA; all you've done is type in a search on a public platform."

What's more, Harlow says that by searching for such information on a platform like Google, a user is releasing the information themselves.

"Some may say that people wouldn't understand that they're releasing information by typing it into a search box," he says. But in this day and age, people are smarter than some assume, he adds.

Harlow says he understands some concerns associated with elderly patients using Google to search for health terms, but ultimately says the privacy policy is sound.
"From a strict legal constructionist's standpoint, the policy is sufficient," he says.

To learn more:
- read this Search Engine Land article
- here's Bono Mack's interview with USA Today

Read more here.

From Laggards to Leaders

2012-02-09T01:31:00.001-08:00

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Secretary Duncan joined FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a Digital Learning Day town hall at the Newseum in Washington. Feb. 1, 2012. Official Department of Education photo by Joshua Hoover."][/caption]

The numbers tell the story.

Two million students, 18,000 teachers, 36 states plus the District of Columbia, 26 national organizations, 24 companies, and 16 state governors joined forces on-line last week to celebrate the first ever National Digital Learning Day.

Their message was clear: Digital technology powers elearning.

Technology in the classroom is not just about the latest tools; it’s an imperative for a country with a high dropout rate competing in a globalized world.

As smart use of digital technology expands, it could boost high school completion. More than 1 million of our students drop out every year — something that’s referred to as the “leaking pipeline:”

Across the country, 24 out of 100 9^th graders are below “Basic” on NAEP reading scores and only 72 will graduate from high school. Forty-four of those students will enter college, but 16 will need remediation, and only 20 will finish with a college degree.

Digital technology makes it possible for teachers to differentiate more effectively by personalizing the learning to meet the needs of each student at every level. With the right use of technologies, we can shift our time from classroom management to focused learning on HOW to teach depth of content and concepts. This is especially critical for our newest teachers.

Mooresville Graded School District in N.C., understands the important role digital tech can play. The district made a huge push to integrate digital technologies, and raised its graduation rate by 25% and is now 3^rd out of 115 school districts with one of the lowest per-pupil expenditures in the state.

But what I most appreciate about digital technology is what it does for the teaching profession.

Smart use of technology simply develops our skills as teachers.

“As a teacher, I’m no longer just a repository of information. My role as a teacher has shifted. With technology, students are engaged,” said 25-year teaching veteran Esther Wojcicki, who teaches journalism in Palo Alto, CA.

And for those who think technology is not feasible because our teaching force isn’t ready, we need to clarify.

America’s teachers know technology. The number of Americans who have grown up on touch phones, Google, Facebook, and Twitter is growing. At the same time, we know that technology has gotten easier and more compelling for everyone: We all use it for work, to research, and to socialize.

So it’s not the technology that we need to train teachers on; it’s the pedagogical shift that needs to happen to use that technology well.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama asked us to think about an America that leads the world in educating its people and digital technology can help do just that.

Secretary Duncan was right when he said, “Technology going forward is going to revolutionize how we provide education.” As a teacher, I can’t wait to be a part of that.

Learn more about ED’s National Education Technology Plan and the Digital Textbook Playbook.

Claire Jellinek is a 9th-12th grade social studies teacher at South Valley Academy in Albuquerque, NM and a 2011-2012 Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow.

This article was originally posted at http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/02/from-laggards-to-leaders/

5 ways to deal with an authoritarian supervisor

2012-02-09T01:30:00.001-08:00

Anand Altekar, ET Bureau

You love the job you're doing, but dread going to work every day. After all, there isn't much value attached to your views or methods of working: your boss makes it very clear that it's his or her way or the highway.

There's no point in trying to talk to such bosses either: as far as they're concerned, communication is a one-way street.

And they always know best. You have frequent thoughts of quitting, but the work is good, and so's the pay. You needn't give up hope - you can manage the authoritarian boss and even learn a few things along the way.

Establish your credibility

Earn respect. Stay focused at all times. Do not beat around the bush while making a point.

"This will result in your boss trusting you more. Stand up to the boss, politely but firmly.

If you are convinced that your boss will not listen to you, find someone he or she is willing to listen to," says Anupam Sirbhaiya, regional director India, Center for Creative Leadership.

Build a relationship

Everyone values relationships and this does not change in a professional environment. Focus on building a long-term relationship with your boss."There are simple things that you shouldn't forget. In a situation where the solution has multiple alternatives, always consider your bosses' alternative.Make sure you do not reject authority. Do not oppose the boss in a public setting, do it in person if you have to," adds Anupam.

Adapt to your boss's style

Remember, your boss deals with different people differently."Every boss has a different style. Authoritarian with some and communicative with others. Know where you fit. Work so that you enable this style to change.Give regular feedback even if it is met with a negative reaction from your boss.You will realise that it is surprisingly easy to get into the inner circle of an authoritarian boss," says Ravi Saxena, founder and CEO, MISB Bocconi.

Learn from your leader

"When I was starting my career, my boss made me do things in a specific manner. Looking back, I think I wasn't mature enough to appreciate what he was trying to do," says Alap Mehra, deputy manager actuarial, Bajaj Allianz.Your boss has reached a certain level because he or she has done some good things. Keep your eyes open and learn from them."Authoritarian bosses can sometimes be insecure. When you follow their methods and achieve success, let them know. Your boss is a person at the end and will appreciate it, which in turn will improve the communication. But make sure you don't follow blindly," adds Saxena.

Stand your ground

Even after trying everything, your boss is probably still being unacceptably authoritarian. But don't quit just yet."Bosses come and bosses go. Keep your eyes on your career and not your boss. If the boss is going wrong, then the management will notice it quicker than they notice your mistakes and appropriate action will be taken," says Ravi.

Lighten that backpack: Obama administration challenges schools to embrace digital textbooks

2012-02-02T04:25:00.005-08:00

Are hardbound textbooks going the way of slide rules and typewriters in schools?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students’ hands within five years. The Obama administration’s push comes two weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school books for use on its iPad tablet.

Digital books are viewed as a way to provide interactive learning, potentially save money and get updated material faster to students.

Digital learning environments have been embraced in Florida, Idaho, Utah, and California, as well as in individual schools and districts such as Joplin, Mo., where laptops replaced textbooks destroyed in a tornado. But many schools lack the broadband capacity or the computers or tablets to adopt the technology, and finding the money to go completely digital is difficult for many schools in tough economic times. And, in some places, adopting new textbooks is an arduous process.

At a time when technology has transformed how people interact and even led to social uprisings in the Middle East, education has too often lagged, Duncan said.

“Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it’s a very simple choice,” Duncan said in an interview.

Tied to Wednesday’s announcement at a digital town hall was the government’s release of a 67-page “playbook” to schools that promotes the use of digital textbooks and offers guidance. The administration hopes that dollars spent on traditional textbooks can instead go toward making digital learning more feasible.
Going digital improves the learning process, and it’s being rolled out at a faster pace in other countries, such as South Korea, Genachowski said in an interview. Genachowski said he’s hopeful it can be cost effective in the long run, especially as the price of digital tablets drops.

“When a student reads a textbook and gets to something they don’t know, they are stuck,” Genachowski said. “Working with the same material on a digital textbook, when they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore: It can show them what a word means, how to solve a math problem that they couldn’t figure out how to solve.”

Students can use the textbooks for video explanations to help with homework, they can interact with molecules, and they can manipulate a digital globe to see stories and data about countries, said Karen Cator, director of the Education Department’s office of education technology.

“We’re not talking about the print-based textbook now being digital. We’re talking about a much more robust and interactive and engaging environment to support learning,” Cator said.

About $8 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on textbooks for children in kindergarten through 12th grade, said Jay Diskey, the executive director of the school division of the Association of American Publishers. Diskey said textbook companies have been working on the technology for the past five to eight years to transform the industry, but that in many cases, schools simply aren’t ready.

“It’s not only the future, it’s the now. The industry has embraced this, but the difficulty does lie in the fact that schools are not yet fully equipped with the hardware. We hope that they get there soon,” Diskey said.
After the tornado last May destroyed several schools in Joplin, the decision was made essentially to go textbook free at three sites hosting high school kids from Joplin High School and the Franklin Technology Center. The United Arab Emirates donated money to buy each student a laptop.

The response from students has been mixed, said Angie Besendorfer, the district’s assistant superintendent. She said the transition has proved difficult for some kids accustomed to a standard routine of answering questions at the end of a chapter, but administrators are pleased with the online learning and hope 8th-graders also will go essentially textbook free.

“It’s a little bit more work on the side of the students in that they are having to think and problem solve and do things differently, and some of our kids are not so fond of that, whereas other kids like it a lot,” Besendorfer said.

_____

Follow Kimberly Hefling on Twitter at http://ping.fm/7CJbC

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/Nr6Bp

Education 2.0: Can Digital Learning Day begin a classroom revolution?

2012-02-02T04:25:00.003-08:00

Thirty-nine states, 15,000 teachers, and 1.7 million students are expected to participate in a series of events and webcasts on Wednesday, Digital Learning Day.

Grant Beacon Middle School student, Jeriah Garcia, works out an algebra problem on his school-supplied iPad in class at Grant, Colo., in January. Organizers of Wednesday’s first-ever national Digital Learning Day hope it will inspire more educators, students, and parents to harness new technologies to enhance young people’s enthusiasm for learning.

Andy Cross/The Denver Post/AP

With iPads making their way into kindergarten classrooms from Maine to Tennessee, it may seem like a given that American education is embracing technology for the rising generation.

But technology’s presence – and effectiveness – varies widely. Just 40 percent of teachers reported that they or their students use computers often during instructional time in a 2010 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Organizers of Wednesday’s first-ever national Digital Learning Day hope it will inspire more educators, students, and parents to harness new technologies to enhance young people’s enthusiasm for learning and help them master key 21st-century skills.

RECOMMENDED: Four tech trends to watch in 2012

“It is time we stop asking students to ‘power down’ when they go to school and instead to ‘power up’ and use their interest in technology as a new way to learn,” says Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that spearheaded Wednesday’s events.

Thirty-nine states, 15,000 teachers, and 1.7 million students are expected to participate in a series of events and webcasts, including a live national town-hall meeting at 1 p.m., Eastern time, featuring US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. (To tune in, click on this link.)

During the town hall, schools from Colorado to New Jersey will connect via Skype to talk about how they’ve improved student achievement through comprehensive plans to integrate digital learning tools and train teachers to make the best use of them.

One example to be featured Wednesday afternoon: The Mooresville Graded School District in North Carolina embarked on a digital conversion plan in 2007, and it has since seen student grades and graduation rates improve.

Staff and all fourth- to 12th-graders have received laptop computers, and younger students have access to Smart Boards and electronic response devices so they can interact during classroom lessons – for instance, by pushing a button to “vote” for an answer to a question posed by the teacher.

Educators in the district say there’s “collaborative hum” among teachers and students, and a chance now to individualize student learning plans.

Town-hall participants will also hear from National Online Teacher of the Year Kristen Kipp from Jeffco's Virtual Academy in Colorado, whose high school English lessons have helped everyone from gifted students to pregnant teens.

On a live-chat feature on the Digital Learning Day website, educators have already exchanged tips on digitally enhanced science projects and antibullying lessons that have been especially effective for students. And they've raised questions about how to ensure that students don’t damage their laptops at home.

By giving students better access to digital tools, districts can help close the digital divide and promote “the four C’s: collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking,” said Bailey Mitchell, chief technology officer for Forsyth County Schools in Georgia, during a webcast on the site Wednesday morning.

Instead of instructing from a textbook, teachers have to “relinquish some of the control [and] think differently” about the types of assignments that will capitalize on digital tools, Mr. Mitchell said.

But for many K-12 school systems, new technologies, social media sites, and video games are still eyed with suspicion, says Richard Halverson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. “You have this real split awareness.... For the people who use [such tools] ... they are invaluable. [But] for many K-12 schools, it threatens the existing relationship between teachers and students, and it’s seen as ... something to be controlled and banned rather than something to be exploited for learning purposes.”

National Digital Learning Day is a chance “for people who are in charge of schools to think, how can we use this, rather than whether we should use this," says Professor Halverson. "[It shows] the potential for these tools to change teaching and learning.”

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/dxE4g

On Digital Learning Day, 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology

2012-02-02T04:25:00.001-08:00

Today is Digital eLearning Day, a national promotional effort by the Alliance for Excellence in Education to call attention to using technology in schools.

More than 10,000 teachers and 1.5 million students have signed up in support to “celebrate innovative teachers and highlight instructional practices that strengthen teaching and personalize learning for all students,” according to the AEE.

To that end, a repost of Adam S. Bellow’s Golden Rules of Technology in Schools, as he stated them at the ISTE 2011 conference.

1) DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. “When I went to school, computers were put in a room called The Lab,” Bellow said. “‘What are they experimenting with in there, I thought.’ Technology wasn’t built into what we were doing. It was farmed off in a room, like it was special. Like we were learning how to code, and in case the Russians came, we’d know what to do.” Technology should be like oxygen, Bellow said, quoting Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy: Ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.

“We’re doing kids a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship.”

2) TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Bellow emphasized the importance of making professional development a priority, the importance of time and money being spent to educate teachers on not just an hour-long how-to session, but ways to integrate technology creatively into educators’ daily teaching practice in meaningful ways. He told the story of an interactive-whiteboard training guide who made one quick appearance at a school, never to return, leaving teachers still unsure of how to use the technology. There’s a world of professional development on YouTube and on Twitter, ironically sites that most schools block (see Number 4.)

3) MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES A LONG WAY. “You can get much more out of mobile tech than out of most other technology,” Bellow said. Kids bring it to class everyday, but we tell them to turn it off as soon as they walk in. In New York City, Bellow said he watched as an agonizingly long queue of students waited for 45 minutes to pass through a metal detector and hand over their cell phones, which were then placed in individually labeled manila envelopes. “Can we do something better with those 45 minutes?” he asked. Cell phones can replace expensive reference books, Flip cameras, old calculators, and the list goes on. “Instead of buying those tools, buy an iPod Touch and it’ll be all of those things,” he said.

4) THE NEW ‘F WORD’ IS FEAR. Not Facebook, and not the other expletive you might have expected. Schools fear everything from being replaced by gadgets (“Any teacher who can be replaced by a robot should be,” he said), to kids knowing more about subjects than they do, to collaborative Web tools that are blocked because of a slew of acronyms that haunt administrators. On one hand, “teachers are frustrated because they feel like they’re being handcuffed,” Bellow said, due to crude filters that block out all kinds of useful websites. On the other hand, kids already come to school with phones that have access to everything. “We could block Facebook, but who are we kidding? They’re already on it,” he said. “The world is not a sterile place. Kids need to learn how to deal with it.” And because kids have access to every kind of information at any time, they need to learn about things like Creative Commons and copyright rules. “We’re doing them a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship,” he said.

5) TECH TOOLS ARE NOT JUST A PASSING FAD. Bellow said he’s heard countless times from those who don’t want to take risks by finding and investing in new tools. And even when they do, they use only a fraction of the tools’ potential purposes because they haven’t invested enough time to figure it out (see Number 2). Bellow told the story of a school administrator who was able to buy iPads for his teachers, but is only using them to take attendance. He showed a video of a 100-year-old woman learning how to use the iPad to browse the Web, to read books, to watch videos, and how excited she was about it. “We are natural lifelong learners,” he said.

6) MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Teachers have access to thousands of free Web tools. And even if the free ones do decide to start charging, others will crop up to replace it. The point is not to be afraid of diving in (see Number 4).

7) INVITE EVERY STAKEHOLDER TO THE CONVERSATION. “Who’s at the table?” Bellow asked. “Mostly administrators, some ask teachers. But here’s a novel idea. Let’s have students come to the table, and parents too!”

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/5CK7K

Michigan Announces Plans to Host Digital Learning Day

2012-01-31T00:20:00.003-08:00

LANSING – The Michigan Department of Education, in partnership with the Alliance for Excellent Education, Monday announced its participation as a state host in the first-ever Digital Learning Day campaign and kick off to Michigan’s “Year of the Digital Learner.”

This national campaign is designed to celebrate innovative teaching and highlight practices that make elearning more personalized and engaging for students, exploring how digital learning can provide all students with the opportunities they deserve — to build the skills needed to succeed in college, a career, and life.

“In Michigan, the first state to require students to successfully complete an online course or learning experience, digital or online learning provides a powerful alternative for students who have a need for greater flexibility with their education due to individual learning styles, employment commitments and comfort with traditional school environments,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan said. “There is a significant potential to expand the use of online learning as a practical strategy to help students stay in school and graduate. We’re excited to be kicking off the Year of the Digital Learner on Feb. 1.”

Through this work and by hosting a Digital Learning Day on Feb. 1, Michigan strives to build momentum for a wave of innovation that changes policies, shifts attitudes, and supports wide-scale adoption of these promising instructional practices.

Digital Learning Day will be the start of a year of digital learning activities to be designated as 2012 Year of the Digital Learner.

“Digital Learning Day is more than just a day,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “It is about building a digital learning movement that provides teachers with better tools to truly provide a quality education for every child. Simply layering on technology alone will not move the education needle very much. Effective technology combined with great teachers and engaged students have the potential to transform the world of learning.”

As the host of Digital Learning Day, Michigan will highlight a school that is using innovation to make a difference for students. Michigan also will continue to reach out and share resources that support the goals of and participation in Digital Learning Day and 2012 Year of the Digital Learner.

A press conference will be held at East Lansing Public Schools’ Donley Elementary School, 2961 Lake Lansing Road, East Lansing, at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

All education stakeholders — parents; teachers; students; librarians; administrators; policymakers; and school, district, and business leaders — are encouraged to sign up now. Participants will have access to targeted toolkits outlining ideas and ways to plan their Digital Learning Day celebration, as well as updates, informational videos, webinars, and other resources.

No matter the approach, no matter the grade level, no matter the subject or geographic location, no matter a teacher’s specific comfort with using technology, this campaign will challenge education professionals and policymakers at all levels to start a conversation, improve a lesson, and/or create a plan.

To learn more about how to be a part of this groundbreaking event, sign up at www.digitallearningday.org. You can also “like” Digital Learning Day on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NationalDigitalLearningDay and follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag DLDday.

Watch the official announcements of Digital Learning Day at www.digitallearningday.org/home-video. For more information on Michigan events, go to www.macul.org/otherevents/year-of-the-digital-learner/.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/5MHPl

Celebrate Digital Learning Day With 40 Years of Times EdTech Reporting

2012-01-31T00:20:00.001-08:00

The New York Times has been covering technology's role in education since the paper first began publishing — from an 1872 editorial questioning whether to teach science or the classics to boys of "ordinary abilities," (PDF) to Sputnik-era pieces demanding more technical education for American schoolchildren (PDF) to today, when you can hardly open, or click on, the paper without finding an article that references the impact of technology on schools, learning or thinking.

For Wednesday, the inaugural Digital Learning Day, a "nationwide celebration of innovative teaching and elearning through digital media and technology," we've combed The Times's archives to find articles from 1970 to 2002 on the impact of the digital revolution on education.

Just a quick glance at the quotes we've pulled from each piece will be enough to show you that the questions we grapple with today — on the "digital divide," the educational value of the Internet, whether machines can replace teachers, if computers are changing the way we think, how teens are making the Internet their own, and even whether to "flip the classroom" — are the same ones we've been worrying about for at least 40 years.

One idea? Choose a piece to share with your students and have them guess in what year it was written.

Meanwhile, to further celebrate the day, we'll be enthusiastically lending our voice to the call of the originators, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and our partners The National Writing Project, Figment and Edutopia, to encourage everyone, regardless of previous experience, to explore learning with digital technology by doing three simple things:

Starting a conversation

Trying one new thing

Showcasing a success

(Follow the links above for simple ideas anyone can try.)

We also have our own ever-growing resource page on Teaching With and About Technology, which includes lessons, links to more recent Times articles and multimedia, and a list of more than 25 still-open Student Opinion questions about the digital lives of young people, in and out of school.

So spread the word about this occasion on Feb. 1 by following some of our suggestions and links and joining the conversation. You'll find us on Twitter @nytimeslearning, where we'll be tweeting (and re-tweeting) about #DLDay all day long.

Some Times Articles on Education and Technology, 1970-2002

1970: Time To Teach Those Teaching Machines (PDF)

There are many reasons why the world's most technologically advanced country has remained so backward in the uses of educational technology.

1972: Electronics Seen as Education Key (PDF)

Contending that higher education "now faces the first great technological revolution in five centuries," the commission said that it expected such instructional tools as videotape cassettes, cable television and computers to be in general use on college and university campuses by the year 2000.

1982: Computers Alter Lives of Pupils and Teachers

Mrs. Mattingly of Lamplighter agreed. "It would be hard to keep students toeing the mark," she said. "You'd have an underground group that would be hitting the keyboard early in the morning before classes started."

1984: Computers in the Groves of Academe

A senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., says he has "never written a paper onto a piece of paper." Instead, he has done his writing on the word-processing terminals scattered around the campus. Armington has also used computers to study philosophy, create random geometric patterns in a course on art and technology and brush up on his French. To keep up with current events in a banking course, he spent $20 an hour for an electronic clipping service…

1985: Functional Illiteracy in the Age of Technology

Despite the fact that we live in an age of technology – when every new car has a small computer to control the ignition and every newspaper contains articles about toxic chemicals and nuclear safety – most people are essentially unequipped to read and understand these articles. And most people are fashionably proud of it. It is no shame to say, 'Well, I really don't know anything about science.'

1987: Computer Programs as University Teachers

Computers are likely to supplement, rather than replace, textbooks and lectures. Right now, "we're in a cusp where we can see it developing, but it's not quite there yet," said Douglas Van Houweling, vice provost for information technology at the University of Michigan.

1990: In the Mind of the High-Tech Child

Want to program a VCR to record the news every night for five nights? Ask an adolescent. Want to set the digital watch alarm to go off at 6:30 a.m.? Ask a 10-year-old. Literacy may be endangered today, but not electronic literacy.

1991: Classes Once Removed

…as more schools try to teach the subject in practical and sophisticated ways, educators say that some attempt to improve technology instruction is better than none.

1993: The Keyboard Becomes a Hangout for a Computer-Savvy Generation

Sixteen-year-old Jon Leger, a high school student in Port Arthur, Tex., does not consider himself a computer whiz. In fact he doesn't see himself as particularly special in any way.

"People at school treat me like I'm nothing," he said. But on the Internet, the network of networks, accessible to anyone with a personal computer modem, he has found his place in a world that extends far beyond his home city in southeast Texas. "On the net," he said, "people are willing to talk to me. It's a huge self-esteem booster."

1994: In North Carolina, It's Full Speed Ahead Into the Digital Age and New Lessons in Ethics

She put on a skit that she'd written, using two stuffed bears wearing sunglasses who were into software copyright infringement. She showed them a slick, 16-minute educational video that BellSouth has distributed free to thousands of schools in the Southeast, featuring Damon Johnson, the lead singer for the rock group Brother Cane. On the video, Mr. Johnson, who has hair like Cher and wears an earring, greets buddies by saying things like, "I see you finally went all digital," and makes speeches about the dangers of bootlegging software.

1996: A New Gulf in American Education, the Digital Divide

The digital divide between these two schools in the heart of Silicon Valley provides perhaps the most striking example anywhere in the nation of a widening gap — between children who are being prepared for lives and careers in the information age, and those who may find themselves held back.

1997: Internet's Value In U.S. Schools Still in Question

A little more than two years from the January 2000 target date set by the Clinton Administration for having every American school linked to the Internet, nearly 70 percent of the nation's schools now have at least one computer with an Internet connection — even if fewer than 15 percent of individual classrooms have network access.

But the educational value of the Internet — once taken as nearly an article of faith — is being called into question at a time when so many of the nation's students cannot solve basic math problems.

1997: High-Tech Teaching Is Losing Its Gloss

…much of what passes for education on computers is a far cry from the well-crafted programs of Scholastic. Most of it is akin to glorified video games offered in the vague but firm belief that access to endless information, regardless of quality, must be good.

1998: Virtual-Classes Trend Alarms Professors

With the arrival of the World Wide Web, video streaming, multimedia CD-ROMs and computer-assisted research, students now have easy access to more facts than scholars a few decades ago ever imagined, and those changes have made some administrators and taxpayers view a classroom lecture as an inefficient mode of imparting knowledge from one brain to many.

2000: As Computers Idle in Class, Training for Teachers Becomes Priority

The teachers who gathered on Thursday in Room 313 at Public School 122 in Astoria, Queens, for the first day of a workshop called Introduction to the Internet were model students. They studied their list of vocabulary terms like "home page" and "modem." They raised their hands. And when the workshop leader asked a question, they tried to answer:

2000: A Day in the Life of the Wired School

Down the hall, third graders in Ashley Schuck's class were learning how to scan photos into the computer and waiting to use the three digital cameras that float from class to class in the school.

2002: To the Liberal Arts, He Adds Computer Science

…at a time when the corporate world and Wall Street are in the funk of a technology hangover, the students in Mr. Kernighan's class have a perspective that seems a levelheaded antidote to the prevailing gloom, based on conversations with a few of them. They have no illusions that computing is a silver bullet for the economy or a sure-fire path to riches.

The Flipped Classroom

2012-01-28T05:17:00.001-08:00

The Flipped Classroom is an interesting concept in blended learning, focussing on literally 'flipping' the traditional model of education...

As Karl Fisch identified, regular homework requiring students to apply theory to problems/activities, highlights three groups;

A proportion who completed the work with no problems and who probably didn't need the practice

A second segment who wouldn't even attempt the homework (didn't want to; not enough time; lack of understanding)

A final group in the middle who would attempt the work, but become frustrated because they couldn't do it or had done it incorrectly.

So instead of 'lecturing' at the front of a class for an hour, this 'chalk & talk' 'transmission' element is recorded (short videos, podcasts, screencasts, etc) and given to students (on CD or online) to watch beforehand (or indeed afterwards). What would be homework i.e applying that information to problems, group work, etc, is now done in class - potentially overcoming the two 'problem groups' discussed above.

The original 'founders' of the Flipped Classroom suggests that 'flipping' increases Teacher to student, and Student to Student interaction, since 'the role of the teacher has changed from presenter of content to learning coach'. Having said that, and as Doug Belshaw highlights, it is based on certain assumptions about our education system in which "we've commoditised learning to such an extent that it's becoming indistinguishable from training".

To this, and many of his other points, I agree. We should challenge core assumptions about how we teach, and importantly, how we assess students. However, in the situation we are in today, I think the Flipped Classroom is a great idea: it could be the starting block for teachers to begin to innovate, and an opportunity to engage students through the VLE (Moodle), provide interactive online content, and free up class time to run more engaging and interactive classes. Subsequently, I think this can lead to increased personal interaction with students, increased formative feedback, and importantly, increased understanding and student satisfaction.

There are a number of services to help support this notion of the Flipped Classroom, whether that be existing videos from the Khan Academy (a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and computer science), YouTube or Open Content (i.e. free with some restrictions) from MIT OCW or the Open University's OpenLearn site. Closer to home, we have facilities to capture our own materials and make them available through the Institutional systems such as Equella or the Podcasting Server.

To give you a better idea on the Flipped Classroom, see the video below. The images I used above were also taken from an interesting infographic from Knewton.com.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, and for those interested in implementing this approach, I'd be happy to help. Also keep your eye open for training and posts about the benefits of using multimedia (video, podcasting, screencasts, etc), to enhance learning, teaching and assessment...

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/C12pD

Public Citizen to OSHA: Enforce Labeling Law for Toxic Coal Byproduct

2012-01-25T05:54:00.003-08:00

According to Public Citizen, workers using coal slag abrasive are exposed to dangerous levels of beryllium, which has been linked to cases of cancer. Coal slag abrasive coal slag abrasive to blast ship hulls, bridges and other metal structures in preparation for painting.

In a letter to OSHA Enforcement Director Thomas Galassi, the group demanded that OSHA enforce a law requiring manufacturers of coal slag abrasive to disclose that their product contains “dangerous” levels of beryllium.

“Workers have a right to know if they are being exposed to toxic chemicals,” said Justin Feldman, worker health and safety advocate with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “But coal slag manufacturers are not indicating that their product contains cancer-causing beryllium. Some companies even have the audacity to market their product as non-toxic. OSHA needs to enforce the law and end this practice at once.”

OSHA’s right-to-know rules require manufacturers to disclose the toxic chemicals in their products if workers might be exposed to unsafe levels. According to Public Citizen, a number of studies have demonstrated that people working with the product are routinely exposed to levels of beryllium that exceed OSHA Training standards. Beryllium exposure causes lung cancer and chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating lung condition.

“OSHA’s enforcement staff has known about this issue for several months, and we are calling on them to do the right thing,” Feldman said. “Dozens of blasting workers die each year from beryllium exposure. If OSHA just enforces the rules that are already on the books, it will save lives.”

The letter is available at http://ping.fm/fA9AB.

10 Innovative & Practical Applications of SMART Tech

2012-01-25T05:54:00.001-08:00

Both of the above quotes come to mind when I am asked, “What does a SMART Board interactive whiteboard do?” The answer is, “Pretty much anything you want it to.” The brush is only as powerful as the imagination and talent of the painter. Creative teachers and skilled artisans share the skill of being able to use the tools they are given to create magic. Good teaching trumps good technology all day long. What good technology can do is enhance and enrich teaching and learning. Using technology for technologies’ sake, electronic traditionalism if you will, lends little to the evolutionary process. If, however, the technology is used to personalize learning through differentiation, support cooperation and collaboration and create experiences otherwise absent, or too difficult or expensive, then we have hit the sweet spot Scott Noon refers to as “Technoconstructivism.”

The SMART Board and SMART Notebook software collaborative learning software are tools that can be used for whole class, small group and individual learning. The below list includes creative ways I have seen the SMART Board used.

1. Small Group/Center Formative Assessment

The best SMART Board is a “sticky” SMART Board. Sticky because it has had kid’s hands all over it. Students working in small groups at the SMART Board as part of a rotation of learning centers in can be used for practice and reinforcement. Notebook software’s Lesson Activity Tool Kit includes customizable flash-based templates that can be used as check for understanding and guide instruction.

2. Virtual Experiences

Some experiences are too expensive or too dangerous to do “for real.” Within Notebook there are 3D objects and virtual manipulatives that allow “hands-on’ish” exploration. There are third-party websites such as Energy Skate Park where students can learn from and with each other and the experience is enhanced by the SMART Board.

3. Reteach/Enrich/Remediate

SMART Recorder is a tool that allows anything that is shared on the board, including voice when a microphone is present, to be saved as a video file. Making these files available can help not only students who may miss class, but also those who may be struggling with certain concepts.

4. Flip the Classroom

Several creative instructors are experimenting with flipping the class whereby videos take the place of direct instruction, allowing students to get individual time in class to work with their teacher on key learning activities. It is called the flipped class because what used to be class work (the “lecture” is done at home via teacher-created videos and what used to be homework assigned problems) is now done in class. SMART Recorder allows teachers to capture direct instruction with one-touch simplicity.

5. Abstract Made More Concrete

SMART Notebook software has an available Math Tools plug-in to quickly create visual representations of a wide range of concepts from elementary school fractions to algebraic functions in AP calculus & HS science courses. These visuals can help students understand abstract concepts by representing them more concretely. Similarly, Notebook has the ability to display 3D objects, some of which are included in the gallery, others available for free download from the Google 3D image library. These images, when paired with a mixed-reality ready document camera, like the SMART Document Camera, allow the manipulation of objects in space from all angles.

6. Enhances Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA) Instructional Approach for Mathematics

There is an elegance and agility as the SMART Board accommodates all three with phases without having to change presentation tools as you would in more traditional spaces. In this model of instruction, young mathematicians use concrete materials to manipulate to solve problems, the SMART Board with the SMART Document Camera help teachers use those materials in their true form vs. overheads which require special transparent objects to do the same. Kids are using the same materials at their seats that teachers use beneath the document camera. In the representational phase, virtual objects such as drawings and pictures are used. The Notebook Gallery has thousands of virtual manipulatives teachers can use with students as they begin representing equations. Finally, the abstract phase involves the use of operational symbols and written equations. SMART Notebook Math Tools software includes an equation editor that allows teachers and students to manipulate numbers and see these graphically represented. Please visitTeaching With SMART Board and Harvey’s Homepage to see some examples.

7. This Board is Your Board…Not So Much My Board

Students learn by doing. Having teachers get out of the way and let the students use the SMART Board and Notebook software to demonstrate understanding of a concept or problem should be at the center of pedagogy. Granted, perhaps only a few students can be directly engaged at the board at a given time, however there is value in peer-teaching and the opportunity to develop presentation skills and sharing with a group. Cooperation and collaboration are fostered and enhanced when students can work with one another versus being passive participants.

8. Interactive Canvas in Notebook

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is vitally important, but I like to think of it in terms of “STEAM” and the A stands for Arts. In the Art classroom, the SMART Board becomes an interactive canvas using another tool called ArtRage. Since the SMART Board is not pen-dependent, students can use a wide variety of real brushes coupled with the software brushes to paint, draw, explore color, etc. These paintings can be the illustrations for original books. Notebook software allows students to create and author stories to compliment their art as it is ideally suited for both text and drawings. Notebook software also allows direct import into PDF format so their books can now be read using any computer, such as Kindle, most eReaders, iPads and iPod touches. Students absolutely love the fact that their work is digital and can be shared with readers across the world.

9. Enhanced Lecture

As a predominantly constructivist teacher, there were times I suffered from “lecture guilt”. However, there are times when – dare I say it – the best way to help students learn is to actually teach them explicitly, via direct instruction. There are tools within Notebook software such as SMART Video Player that enable the SMART Board to become a media hub of sorts. The seamless integration of third-party audio and video resources can serve to differentiate instruction and appeal to multiple intelligences for those times when direct instruction is appropriate.

10. Electronic Professional Learning Communities

Admittedly, this suggestion appears to be out of place in a list of creative ways to use a SMART Board. However, I like a quote from James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds; “And much of what we’ve seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled decision maker.”

Put another way, there are brilliant, creative educators who are doing incredible things with their SMART Boards. However, the skill and expertise of any one SMART Board guru is dwarfed by the collective wisdom of the crowd. Technology blows the walls off the school and makes professional sharing possible. Visit the SMART Exchange website and search thousands of lessons created by classroom teachers and well-known education publishers that you can use whole cloth or customize to use with your students. The Exchange also contains a forum where you can connect and create your own User Groups.

There are other terrific resources such as SMART Board Revolution that allow you to collaborate by sharing ideas, and tips in an effort to maximize our students’ learning. Whether it be in your building, your district or an on-line community, connecting with other educators and having the confidence to share and the humility to learn is essential in moving teaching practice forward.

Please note the above list is not meant to be exhaustive nor prescriptive. Hopefully you find it helpful. I would love to hear other examples of creative ways you’re using your SMART Board.

—

Brady Phillips began working with SMART in 2007 as Manager, North American Education Consulting, and is currently Manager, Education Practice.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/t6qUh

Understanding the Impact of eLearning & Distance Learning on Your Net Operating Profit

2012-01-24T04:52:00.003-08:00

When a learning professional is “STRATactical,” it implies that he or she fully understands the strategy needed to be successful as they tactically engage in behaviors to achieve success in the development and delivery of all learning services and products, with a keen understanding of the importance that eLearning and Distance Learning have on the financial success of an organization, while at the same time, building a learning legacy more influential than when they arrived at the organization.

Although learning professionals operate within a business structure, we have not been traditionally seen as business savvy or having much business acumen. However, if we can “walk the talk” of business operations -- acquire sufficient business acumen -- we will both portray and impact our organization’s financial growth and lend legitimacy to the administrative and operational functions learning brings to an organization.

As an example, when I retired from the FBI to begin my career in business, I was unprepared for the “language of business” to meet the challenges posed to me by CEOs, COOs and CFOs. I fully understood the goals aligned to the business strategy, however, I lacked an understanding of the business acumen and how to align a learning function with a business operations foundation. The road ahead meant I needed to embark on learning how a business functions and what the drivers are behind those functions. My road led me to complete three years of courses in a Doctoral studies program in Business Administration. I needed to align learning and development (L&D) to the organization’s strategy and provide tactics to impact the business through L&D initiatives and programs. Fortunately, the learning technologies and tools were advancing as rapidly as my understanding of business operations, resulting in my passion for and belief in eLearning and distance learning as the key discriminators to affect the net operating profit of a business. These tools simultaneously provide learning opportunities that are on-demand, just-in-time, ready-to-learn, while they personally and professionally grow an audience of employees.

Not only are industries changing and disappearing, internal management functions are changing and some are disappearing as well. For the organization’s learning professional(s) to succeed, they must engage in an understanding of the functions within the business organization that are the heartbeat of business operations. A professional colleague, Wally Adamchik, President of Be A Firestarter, recently advised me, “You may offer effort, but you are judged on results.”

Simply offering courses, whether they are instructor-led or eLearning, web-based or utilize distance learning, is not enough, learning professionals must clearly provide training to the business operations functions and they must do so with an eye on the business impact they can influence in learning outcomes and financial savings and revenue generation. In short, learning professionals must not consider themselves as an administrative function, rather as an operational function to support their business.

Another professional colleague, Kevin Cope, President and CEO of Acumen Learning recently advised me, “If you can contribute to your company’s cash and cash flow, you’ll be valued as an employee who practices business acumen -- and you’ll help fuel the success of your business. Further, how much more effective would you be as leaders and decision makers by first knowing the key measures and then what the trend or change is of those numbers, the ‘why’ behind the changes and then identify how they can impact the number(s) within your individual role?”

Dick Davies, President of Sales Lab DC, advised me “….how quickly an attitude and behavioral change can trigger a significant performance improvement…[and] finding and implementing a skill or practice that improves performance is an important behavior…” As reinforcement, Scott Eblin, author of The Next Level, has stated, “…we must abandon the behaviors that made us successful previously, and embrace new behaviors where different results are expected.

Acting STRATactically
I trust I have outlined a solid foundation to my belief that learning professionals must provide business impact to an organization through the development and delivery of learning services and products. So, where do you begin?

With an eye on the business impact, first look at developing a training needs analysis and decision matrix culminating in an enterprise training initiative aligned to business operation functions. Ask yourself and ask business function leaders within your organization, “Which functions have the greatest impact on our business success? Prioritize those functions and choose the top three. Start with the most important function and determine the roles within that function that are the wheels behind driving that function. There may be two, three, maybe ten or more, but establish the priority of those roles too.

In discussing with the functional leader, determine:

1) who within that role is a subject matter expert (SME),
2) what is the voluntary turnover/resignation rate of employees within that role, and
3) what does that cost the business in dollars – which may include lost direct revenue, recruitment monies spent to find a replacement, time to train the new employee, etc.

Determine with the SME what courses related to that role are currently offered within the organization or through a vendor. Continue the discussion with the SME by asking if those are the courses needed to function within that role within the organization. There may be courses that are missing – it is now you are performing a training gap analysis. With the SME make a list of the requisite courses to function within that role – and identify them as basic, intermediate and advanced. Contact former employees within that role, those that voluntarily resigned, and ask them if this new list of courses, if offered, would have made a difference in their decision to leave the organization. Now, with the SME and concurrence of the functional leader, prioritize the courses within that role that are required and develop those that are missing. It is now you need to determine if an instructor-led (ILT) or eLearning (eL), web-based (WBT) or distance learning (DL) course is the correct way forward in closing the gap on training within that functional role.

To assist in your decision making whether to develop and deliver or purchase and deliver the course(s) as eL, WBT or DL, use the language of business – conduct a financial analysis and employ cost comparison methodology for staffing, development, delivery, production of course materials, costs of classroom space, multi-media, travel and per diem, record keeping, etc. Once completed, now you can return to the training analysis methodology and repeat for each role, within each function and you will have the financial information documented to justify your eLearning and distance learning approach to training within your organization. And, when you proven your eLearning and distance learning approaches have improved bottom-line savings to corporate expenses, it will be time to turn your developed content into a revenue generation model which will improve top-line growth and the learning function will be recognized as a viable business operation within your organization.

Learning professionals who have kept pace with learning technologies and tools know that eLearning and distance learning capabilities deliver similar, if not more powerful, learning impact for the learner; now, armed with a training needs analysis approach and a cost calculation model, the road ahead is clear. Lead by example – exemplify the behavior needed to focus on eLearning and distance learning to impact the net operating profit of your organization.

Alan A. Malinchak is the Chief Learning Officer at Homeland Security Solutions, Inc. (HSSI). Malinchak can be reached at malinchaka@homelandsecurityinc.com, or contact him through LinkedIn.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/gdTqB

Study Shows Algebra iPad App Improves Scores in One School

2012-01-24T04:52:00.001-08:00

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="Students at Presidio Middle School use the HMH iPad algebra app."]
[/caption]

As Apple pushes out its new education products, new information about whether using the iPad gives students an advantage over using print books is starting to surface.

Results from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s year-long study comparing students using the publisher’s iPad algebra app are in from Amelia Earhart school in Riverside, Calif., and it’s largely positive, according to the company.

The study showed that 78 percent of students who used the HMH algebra iPad app scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the California Standards Test, compared to 59 percent of students who used the textbook version. “As students were randomly assigned to use HMH Fuse, the results indicated that use of the app was the chief cause behind the improvement in student test scores,” the report states.

HMH

Some of the advantages of the app, according to the report:

Allowed parents to provide more support to their children: “Parents could watch the videos or review problems with their children to help them if they did not understand.”

Students were much more motivated during class and were more interested in the subject.

Changes in student learning outside of the classroom. Students reported reading more and trying to work independently outside of class when completing homework. Also, students were coming to class explaining that they had watched the video multiple times at home.

MindShift covered the pilot project when it first launched last year at the Presidio Middle School in San Francisco.

Algebra teacher Jeanetta Mitchell, who piloted the app in her class, said at the time that there was definitely an adjustment period and different levels of expectations, both on the part of students and administrators.

She said that when the pilot first launched, test scores for the class using the iPad were actually lower than those using the traditional textbook.

“I had a conversation with the class explaining to them that the iPad was not the panacea of all ills.It wasn’t going to do everything for them, that they still had to think,” she said. “You have to beengaged. It’s not giving you the answers; it’s helping you get the answers.”

But even more importantly than scores, Mitchell noticed that some students who’d showed no interest in math in the past are hooked. “I have students who are participating in this class who did not participate in their previous math classes, so it does engage them,” she says. “Is it going to make them all brainiacs and straight A students? No it’s not going to do that. But it will keep them engaged.”

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/AlqmU

Designing the 21st Century K-12 Classroom

2012-01-19T05:21:00.003-08:00

It's not enough to take a traditional K-12 classroom and fill it with technology. The smart classroom requires a more methodic approach that factors in the design of the basic shell, the teacher's space, and the students' independent and collaborative work areas.

Schools that ignore this step, said Issac Herskowitz, director of New York-based Touro College'sinstructional technology program, will wind up with smart classrooms that fall short of their goals. "Designing classrooms for today's learners requires a different approach than what's been traditionally employed in K-12 settings," said Herskowitz.

Here are six design elements that should be incorporated into the 21st Century classroom.

1. Desks and furniture that support collaboration. The days of the single desk and chair are gone, according to Herskowitz. He said he envisions a time when all K-12 classrooms are developed around the concept of collaboration--between student and teacher and among the students themselves.

"You want students to be able to do discovery learning and to work together on projects and problem-solving," said Herskowitz.

To support that concept, he said, furniture should be able to accommodate multiple learners and then be repositioned for independent learning (such as testing). "When you start with this foundation," said Herskowitz, "the collaboration comes naturally."

2. Ample electrical outlets. Not all students will come to class with their iPads and laptops charged up and ready to go. To make sure 21st Century learners have the power they need to engage in classroom activities, Amber Golden Raskin said her school uses a combination of electrical outlets, some of which are integrated into the classroom furniture, and power strips that are distributed through the classroom.

"Think about your students' current and future power needs early in the design phase," said Raskin, executive director of business development and operations at SCVi Charter School in Castaic, CA, "and you'll avoid the hassle of having to add more at a later date, post-construction."

3. A "smart" teacher lectern. Teaching in a smart classroom requires a "smart" lectern, said Herskowitz, who advised schools to put time and money into the structures that teachers will use as their home bases. USB ports that allow for easy document camera connections, interactive whiteboard equipment controls, and other features should be incorporated into the fixtures.

"You really want to make everything accessible for the teachers that are using the technology," said Herskowitz. "If instructors are comfortable in the space and able to use all of the tools that you put in front of them, half the battle is won."

4. Lighting that's easy to control. With audiovisual technology becoming more advanced and even more useful in the K-12 classroom, the need for lighting that's easy to dim or enhance is imperative. The student sitting furthest away from the projection screen, for example, must be able to see the workspace clearly and without interference from shadows.

"Factor in the natural lighting, the fixtures, and the controls," said Herskowitz, "and focus on accessible lighting controls that allow the teachers to adjust quickly."

5. Physical space that goes beyond the single classroom. Who says the 21st Century classroom has to be a single room? At SVCi, a four-year-old charter school, Raskin said holes were intentionally punched in classroom walls to help create a collaborative environment that expands beyond a single room. "Students and teachers can go in and out of the openings, which are covered by curtains when not in use," said Raskin.

The strategy works particularly well when teachers collaborate on interdisciplinary projects. "Being able to share across classrooms is a big deal here," said Raskin, "and something that we strived for when designing our learning spaces."

6. Fewer expansive gathering areas. The traditional, campus-wide auditorium didn't have a place at SVCi. Instead there are several mid-sized gathering areas designed to accommodate three or four classrooms full of students who need to come together to share, collaborate, or watch a live presentation.

"We went with smaller common areas rather than just one big assembly room," said Raskin. "Our goal was to get students exercising the 'expression' muscles in smaller groups that lend themselves to more participation and collaboration."

At its core, Raskin said, the modern-day classroom's design should revolve around the idea that students should no longer be sitting alone at desks "spitting out answers" to a teacher who stands behind a podium. "In the last century we were a factory-driven society and schools were designed around that concept," said Raskin. "Today we must create spaces where students can collaborate and participate in real-life environments where they can learn how to work on teams; that's what they'll be doing in the work world."

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/5WBxj

For Digital Learning, the Devil?s in the Details

2012-01-19T05:21:00.001-08:00

When former governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise strode to the stage at the 2011 Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco last October, Sal Khan had just shown the 750 attendees his vision of the digital future.

Khan is the former hedge-fund analyst turned education rock star who started Khan Academy, a nonprofit that reaches millions through its free online lessons and assessments. Tools like these, said Khan, can catapult education from its time-based roots toward a competency-based model in which students progress upon actual learning—mastery—instead of seat time.

At the same conference a year earlier, the two former governors, cochairs of Digital Learning Now!, released “10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning.” This year, Bush and Wise said they had evaluated each of the 50 states against the elements and explained the assessment methodology they had used: states were judged against 72 individual metrics. (Disclosure: I was one of many who provided feedback on how different states ranked on the criteria and serve as a “digital luminary” for the Digital Learning Now! effort.) Rather than announce where the states fell in the ranking, the governors gave the crowd a preview of their “Roadmap for Reform,” a guide to help states navigate different paths toward changing their online education policies (see sidebar).

With the road map in place, one might assume that moving into the future will be a straightforward exercise: the pieces are all there and model legislation is forthcoming, so state policymakers just have to enact the 10 Elements.

Of course, things are never so simple, and many questions remain.

Some questions reflect legitimate disagreement over Digital Learning Now!’s recommendations, even among those who agree with its broad vision. An obvious flash point will be the idea that states require students to take at least one college- or career-prep course online to earn a high school diploma.

One argument in favor of the requirement is that the outcome from taking an online course—gaining the skills to succeed in a digital environment and perhaps become more self-driven—is valuable in a world in which postsecondary education and workforce training are increasingly done online. Yet some see this as yet another input-based requirement in a system already overburdened with mandates, and in conflict with the spirit of digital learning: if the experience is so important or compelling, won’t students naturally flock to online learning, particularly given Digital Learning Now!’s recommendation that dollars follow students to the online course of their choice?

Another consideration is that elementary-school students don’t take courses—at least in the sense that high-school and middle-school students do—and so ensuring that elementary-school students have access to online learning at the course level seems to miss some fundamental principle. According to the state report cards, though, several states have achieved their goals at the elementary-school level, which only raises more questions.

Many of the pieces that Digital Learning Now! casts as critical to the endeavor are not yet in place, and therefore no one actually knows how they will work in practice. For example, Digital Learning Now! has hitched its wagon to the enactment of the Common Core standards and accompanying next-generation assessments that should be in place by 2014. Whether these assessments will facilitate a competency-based learning environment unburdened by time—or lock in today’s system—is yet to be seen. States may abandon the digital effort when they see the up-front costs of implementing an online assessment system. And if they do, what will that mean for a plan that rests on paying for achievement instead of seat time? Valid, reliable, authentic, on-demand, and independent assessments are critical to moving to a system based on student learning outcomes. What about those courses that don’t fall under the Common Core? Does an outcome-based funding system require extending the Common Core to all subject areas, or will states create unique standards for subject areas other than math and English? Could entrepreneurs develop competency badges for their students that the public would recognize as legitimate? How would such competency measures be accredited?

A number of operational challenges need to be worked out as well. Utah, for example, passed in the spring of 2011 Senate Bill 65, based on the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning. Utah state senator Howard Stephenson declared that the bill ends the “tyranny of time and place” in education by allowing dollars to follow high school students to their online course of choice. The legislation calls for the state to withhold 50 percent of the provider’s fee until the student successfully completes the course.

Not surprisingly, the devil has been in the details. Crafting a viable funding model for online courses that makes sense for districts and providers alike has not been easy. Even more challenging is helping schools and districts transition to a world in which students still need some of the services they provide but take most of their courses online. How does funding work in this model? How do schools create the flexible schedules and offer the critical services—many of which may be nonacademic—to accommodate students’ varying needs? How do they transition to this service—or community center—model?

A related set of issues plagues the funding model from the state’s fiscal perspective. If students progress based on competency instead of cohort, the state should presumably reward schools and providers that help students progress faster. And Digital Learning Now! suggests that it should reward those providers that help students make the most growth. Set aside for a moment the demands on state data systems created by an outcome-based system that rewards growth and the fact that these systems are not in place today. If this policy were in place, the state would be on the hook for paying for a student who masters, say, 20 half-semester courses in a given year, rather than a more conventional 12 or 14. How will states deal with this fiscal uncertainty? Holding back students seems like a poor choice, as does punishing schools that can educate students faster with less revenue.

And what if a student masters the high school curriculum by the time she is 15, as many students undoubtedly could? Does she go to college? Does she take time off? Or does she stay in high school with her friends but take college courses? If so, who pays?

Suggesting that a road map document could tackle such complexity isn’t fair. But a glimpse into the exciting— and uncertain—future presented by Digital Learning Now! does raise many legitimate questions. That’s no reason to delay implementing its recommendations though; innovation is never perfect right out of the box. Iteration in practice is critical. With the “Roadmap” coming on the heels of Khan’s conference presentation, surely some in the audience wondered whether innovations yet to come might even clear away many of the familiar roadblocks.

Eight Tools for Charter School Entrepreneurs

2012-01-18T02:36:00.003-08:00

Charter school quality varies substantially from state to state, school to school. Nevertheless, the charter approach continues to hold promise as a potent catalyst for innovation, including empowering parents and teachers and catalyzing district school reform.

At its core, strategic management for charter schools involves achieving alignment among three core elements: the mission, operations, and stakeholder support.

When these elements are aligned, charter schools can achieve greatness. Unfortunately, most organizations—charters are no exception—operate in a state of misalignment due to conflicts over mission, inadequate capacity, lack of support, or some combination of the three.

The goal of achieving alignment and fit between the three elements should be the singular managerial obsession of charter entrepreneurs. All significant decisions and actions should be judged by whether they advance or retard alignment in a school. Decisions about these actions should be made using three conditions: the action should be valuable, advance the school’s mission, and be feasible. The feasibility of the chosen course is dependent both on adequate operational capacity to execute the idea and that it be supported by key stakeholders.

Beyond achieving alignment, charters need to adopt better managing strategic tools. We offer eight such tools and frameworks that any charter can use. In helping children achieve their potential, charter entrepreneurs may believe they are too hurried and pressured to focus on strategic management. We believe it is precisely because they operate under pressure, and in a domain where the stakes are so high, that they must devote time and energy to strategy building.

1. Logic models

This tool clarifies assumptions regarding how a school can reach its intended impact by defining in simple and causal form the necessary inputs, essential activities, expected outputs, and planned outcomes. When significant decisions are framed provocatively by logic modeling, questions often arise like: how tight is the model?; how much of what happens between inputs and impact is a function of unknown, uncontrollable factors in the external environment?; and how much is attributable to an organization’s programs and work?

2. Performance scorecards

A performance measurement system provides information and guidance about the school’s direction. Tools like dashboards and scorecards reduce the number of metrics to a manageable group that can be the focus of the leader’s—and board’s—consistent attention. A well-executed scorecard shows how the organization is doing in the areas of educational achievement, financial management, human resource management, and quality management.

3. Leadership theory framework

Charter leaders may be tempted to use authority to resolve conflicts. But a less technical and more adaptive approach to leadership, emphasizing the common search for a solution, may be more effective. In many instances, charter leaders must attend to conflicting visions, interpretations, and agendas within their schools and weave them together into a coherent and compelling vision. This is the work of a charter school leader.

4. Program portfolio analysis

Charter schools are complex amalgamations of programs, projects, and initiatives. It’s useful to develop a matrix to classify these efforts according to their financial and social return. Doing so can bring forward initiatives within the school’s portfolio that are core and financially viable while also pinpointing those that aren’t mission relevant or revenue positive.

5. Scaling frameworks

Scale is achieved through different strategies, including financial strength, on-site program expansion, program comprehensiveness, and multi-site replication. This last approach often captures the imagination of charter entrepreneurs. A key replicating tension is between model fidelity and quality local leadership that may want to adapt the model. A compromise is possible, which allows for both core consistency across sites and local control to meet community needs. Scaling frameworks enable schools to attract high-quality local leaders who place their distinctive stamp on the school.

6. SWOT analysis

One longstanding tool for gathering good information about what is going on around and inside the school is SWOT analysis. It also looks beyond organizational horizon, identifying threats that disrupt organizational progress and opportunities to be seized. SWOT also has a retrospective quality, because it looks at strengths and weaknesses evidenced from what the organization has accomplished. Through SWOT, charter leaders can engage boards in the important exercise of risk assessment and management, also setting the stage for an informed planning process.

7. Stakeholder analysis

A key step in navigating stakeholder environment categorizes the school’s parties using a tool emphasizing relative power, legitimacy, and urgency. Effective stakeholder management distinguishes between dormant, discretionary, demanding, dominant, dangerous, dependent, and definitive stakeholders. While it’s tempting to assert the egalitarian position that all stakeholders have equal standing, such an approach is disaster when trying to keep a charter heading in the right direction.

8. Customer service surveys

To focus improvement efforts, charter entrepreneurs need reliable data on how well the school meets the needs of key customers. Unlike retail store customers who buy and use the good or service, the education buyer is almost always a public agency or private donor while the end user is a family. This makes tracking customer service far more challenging. It requires regular data collection from families about their school experience and a clear method for assessing how the school is doing in its patron’s eyes. Family satisfaction is a leading indicator for many things, including fundraising success, charter renewal, and teaching morale. Measuring and managing customer satisfaction on a regular basis is critical.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/FH4oe

$2 Million Competition Seeks Ideas to Transform Learning

2012-01-18T02:36:00.001-08:00

As President Obama called for new efforts to reimagine and improve education in science and math, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $2 million open competition for ideas to transform learning using digital media. The competition seeks designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and others to build digital media experiences – the learning labs of the 21st Century – that help young people interact, share, build, tinker, and explore in new and innovative ways. Supported by a grant to the University of California at Irvine, the competition was planned and announced in partnership with National Lab Day, a movement to revitalize science, technology, engineering and math in schools that was highlighted at a White House event today.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), in cooperation with the Entertainment Software Association and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, will team with MacArthur to support Game Changers, a new component of the competition. Game Changers will provide awards for the creation of new game experiences using PlayStation’s popular video game, LittleBigPlanet™. SCEA will also donate 1000 PlayStation®3 (PS3™) systems and copies of the LittleBigPlanet™ game to libraries and community-based organizations in low-income communities.

“Lifting American students from the middle to the top of the pack in STEM achievement over the next decade will not be attained by government alone,” said President Obama. “I applaud the substantial commitments made today by the leaders of companies, universities, foundations, non-profits and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers, and teachers from across the country.”

“MacArthur is pleased to team with Sony and National Lab Day to encourage the next generation of innovators to focus on science, technology, engineering and math. Digital media, including games, are the learning labs of the future and this open competition encourages people to consider creative new ways to use digital media to create learning environments that are engaging, immersive and participatory,” said Connie Yowell, MacArthur’s Director of Education. “This competition will help ensure that the new and highly engaging approaches to science, technology, engineering, and math find their way into schools, libraries, museums, and other spaces for learning.”

“This challenge truly embodies what’s possible when you place the learning tools and the opportunity into the hands of creative and imaginative minds,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America. “When leveraging the innovative technology of LittleBigPlanet and the PS3 system, both advanced and novice gamers have access to an open canvas to learn, build, and explore entirely new kinds of gaming experiences. They can also share their creations with millions of gamers around the world to play, rate, and review their levels. There’s no better training ground for anyone interested in digital media.”

The competition is designed to promote “participatory learning,” the notion that young people often learn best through sharing and involvement. Participatory learning, as defined by the competition, is a form of learning connected to individual interests and passions, inherently social in nature, and occurring during hands-on, creative activities. Successful learning labs and games will exploit all of these elements. Awards will be made in two categories: 21st Century Learning Lab Designers and Game Changers.

The competition includes three rounds of submissions, with public comment at each stage. The public will also be invited to judge the final candidates, including the selection of People’s Choice awards in each category.

“Learning labs are digital media projects that promote hands-on participatory learning,” said Cathy Davidson, Duke University Professor and David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, HASTAC co-founders. “They promote learning together with others, by interactively doing, trying, sometimes failing. When we think of laboratories, the image of beakers and microscopes come to mind, but learning labs help us reimagine and expand our understanding of learning across all domains of knowledge.”

Competition winners will join an existing community of 36 awardees from 2007 and 2008, including a video blogging project for young women in Mumbai, India; a cutting-edge mobile phone application that lets children conduct digital wildlife spotting and share that information with friends; a project that leverages low-cost laptops to help indigenous children in Chiapas, Mexico learn by producing and sharing their own media creations; and an online platform for 200 classrooms around the world that allows young people to monitor, analyze, and share information about the declining global fish population.

The competition is funded by a MacArthur grant to the University of California, Irvine, and is administered by the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), a virtual network of learning institutions. The competition is part of MacArthur’s digital media and learning initiative, which is designed to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to education and other social institutions that must meet the needs of this and future generations.

Information about the competition, which will begin officially on December 14, 2009, is available at www.dmlcompetition.net.

10 Things Chemical Plant Operators Need to Know About OSHA's New Chem NEP

2012-01-16T03:14:00.003-08:00

OSHA announced the launch of its PSM National Emphasis Program for chemical facilities (Chem NEP). The new Chem NEP expands nationwide a previous 2009 Pilot Chemical Facilities Process Safety Management NEP, which had covered only a few OSHA regions, and established policies and procedures for inspecting workplaces covered by the PSM Standard.

The inspection process under the new�Chem NEPincludes detailed questions designed to gather facts related to PSM requirements and verification that employers' written PSM programs are adequately implemented in the field. The intent of the NEP is to conduct focused inspections at facilities randomly selected from a list of worksites likely to have covered processes. The director of OSHA, Dr. David Michaels, announced at the launch of this new NEP that during "the pilot Chemical NEP, [OSHA] found many of the same safety-related problems that were uncovered during our NEP for the refinery industry … As a result, [OSHA is] expanding the enforcement program to a national level to increase awareness of these dangers so that employers will more effectively prevent the release of highly hazardous chemicals."
Below are the 10 most important things chemical plant operators need to know about the new nationwide Chem NEP:

1.�It is effective immediately and has no expiration.
Programmed inspections will begin immediately in all regions. Unlike the Refinery PSM NEP and the Pilot Chem NEP, this directive does not include an expiration date.

2.�It expands the Chem NEP nationwide.
Whereas the pilot NEP involved only a few select regions under federal OSHA’s jurisdiction, the new nationwide Chem NEP applies to all OSHA regions. And unlike the pilot chem and refinery NEPs, states are�requiredto participate in this emphasis program. If the approved state OSHA plan already has some version of a Chem NEP or wants to implement its own version (within 60 days), the state plan must demonstrate to federal OSHA that its program is at least as effective. Otherwise, the states must adopt this directive.

3.�Targets for Chem NEP inspections include:
The types of workplaces inspected under the new Chem NEP are similar to the pilot. OSHA will assemble a master list for each region based on employers who: (1) submitted Program 3 Risk Management Plans to EPA; (2) have a NAICS code for Explosives Manufacturing; (3) appear in OSHA’s enforcement database as having been cited in the past for PSM-related issues; and (4) are known to the area office as operating a PSM-covered process. Any workplaces selected for inspection under OSHA’s Site-Specific Targeting Plan, which also happen to operate a PSM-covered process, will be inspected under the Chem NEP directive. Likewise, inspections arising from an employee complaint, referral or incident involving a PSM issue also will be conducted under the Chem NEP directive. Complaints, referrals and incidents unrelated to PSM may still result in an inspection under this directive at the area director’s discretion.

VPP- or SHARP-approved facilities are partially exempt. (They are exempt from programmed inspections, but may be subject to inspection under the Chem NEP upon an employee complaint, incident or referral related to PSM.)�

4.�The selection of unit(s) includes:
OSHA will attempt to identify “the most hazardous process” as the selected unit(s) for inspection under the Chem NEP. The selection of the unit(s) will be based on the following:
· Quantity of chemicals in the process;
· Age of the process unit;
· Number of workers and/or contractors present;
· Incident and near-miss reports and other history;
· Input from the union or operators;
· Ongoing maintenance activities; and
· 119(o) Compliance Audit findings.

5.�Inspection scheduling expectations include:
Every OSHA area office across the country is expected to complete 3-5 programmed Chem NEP inspections per year. The sites selected for inspections will consist of approximately 25 percent workplaces that use ammonia refrigeration and 75 percent all other workplaces with a PSM coverage process.�

6.�It emphasizes implementation over documentation.
Like the pilot NEP, compliance officers will be focused on implementation of PSM elements in the field rather than relying solely on the quality of the written PSM program.

7.�It features dynamic list questions.
Like the pilot NEP, the dynamic list-based evaluation under the Chem NEP is a mandatory gap analysis formatted in a series of questions to facilitate evaluation of compliance with various elements of the PSM standard. The list of questions rotates periodically and will not be publicly disclosed. The questions are accompanied by guidance for CSHOs as to what documents to request, interview topics and questions to cover, and potential citations to issue. Each dynamic list includes 10-15 primary and 5 secondary questions. Questions are designed to elicit a “Yes,” “No” or “N/A” determination of PSM compliance, and any “No” will normally result in a citation.

8.�The following documents and presentations will be requested:
During a Chem NEP inspection, employers will be asked to produce the following documents:
· List of PSM-covered processes;
· List of units and maximum intended inventories;
· Three years of OSHA 300 logs for employer and contractors, and contract employee injury logs;�
· Summary description of PSM program;
· PFDs, P&IDs, Plot Plans and electrical classification drawings for the selected unit(s);
· Description of process and safety systems, safe upper and lower operating limits and design codes and standards for the selected unit(s);
· The initial PHA and the most recent Redo or Revalidation for the selected unit(s) (including PHA reports and worksheets, recommendations and action items and schedule for addressing and completing recommendations and action items); and
· PSM incident reports for the selected unit(s).

Before a walkaround inspection, OSHA will request the following presentations:
· Overview of the company’s PSM Program and how it is implemented;
· Identify personnel responsible for implementing each PSM element;
· Description of records used to verify compliance; and
· Process description for the selected unit(s).

9.�A single issue will yield multiple citation items.
As we reported about the refinery NEP, OSHA was turning a single issue into multiple violations. The agency has memorialized this practice in the Chem NEP directive. The directive advises CSHOs that a single valve change, for example, could implement 11 different PSM elements, and each should be considered for individual citation items.

10.�Abatement verification and documentation is now mandatory.
Under the pilot NEP, some citations required employers to simply certify that abatement had been completed. Under the new Chem NEP, however, abatement verification and documentation is now mandatory. The NEP also directs CSHOs to review past PSM-related citations issued to the same employer going back 6 years, and identify potential failures to abate and possibly repeat and willful violations.

United States and North Carolina homeschool population continues to grow

2012-01-16T03:14:00.001-08:00

The population of homeschoolers in the United States continues to grow according to new research and the report,2.04 Million Homeschool Students in the United States in 2010, recently published by the National Home Education Research Institute. By their calculations, the growth rate from 2007 to the present has been 8.3% per year. Because some states do not require homeschool registration, some estimates include the conjecture that up to 2, 346,000 students could be homeschooled as of 2010.

According to their website, their mission is to:

“Produce high-quality homeschool research (e.g., statistics, facts, findings on home-based education or homeschooling).

Serve as a clearinghouse of research for the public, researchers, homeschoolers, the media, and policy makers.

Educate the public concerning the findings of all research on home education (i.e., homeschooling).”

The non-profit Institute’s founder and president Dr. Brian D. Ray, Ph. D. has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Academic Leadership as well as his own books and videos.

This particular report examines only the population growth of homeschooling in the United States over the past few years.More encompassing research in the past has detailed the demographics of homeschooling families and parents and the success found in Homeschool, including continuously higher than average standardized test scores when compared to the general public school population.

North Carolinais mentioned in this recent report as being one of a small group of the most credible states for homeschool statistics. Some states do not require reporting of homeschool intent, while others offer other evaluation opportunities other than standardized tests.

Statistics provided by the North Carolina Division for Non-Public Education support the conclusion of the NHERI that homeschooling is indeed growing each year.

The 2010 North Carolina Home School Statistical Summarystates the total home school enrollment at 81,509 for the 2009-2010 school year.

The 2011 North Carolina Home School Statistical Summarystates the total home school enrollment at 83,609 for the 2010-2011 school year, showing a growth of 2,100 additional students over one year.

For Wake County, the growth in the number of students is 143 from the 2009-2010 school year to the 2010-2011 school year. In contrast, Mecklenburg County showed a decrease in the number of students enrolled in homeschool during those respective years.

Homeschooled students have grown to adulthood and are beginning to Homeschool their own children. Those affected by the economy may suspend homeschooling to reenter the job market, while others who had children in private school and can no longer afford it choose to bring their children home to begin homeschooling them. Regardless of the numbers, homeschooling has proven itself to be an effective means to educating children and it’s popularity continues to grow.

This article was originally posted at http://www.examiner.com/homeschooling-in-raleigh/united-states-and-north-carolina-homeschool-population-continues-to-grow

HIPAA Electronic Transaction Standards Make Progress

2012-01-12T01:16:00.001-08:00

Claims processing standards expected to cut administrative burden on healthcare providers, insurance companies, and states, says Department of Health and Human Services.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued an interim final rule that prescribes operating standards for electronic fund transfers (EFT) and electronic remittance advice (ERA)--the payment explanation that gives details about providers' claims payment. Last July, HHS released standards for insurance eligibility and claims status transactions.

Required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), these operating rules are expected to cut $16 billion from the administrative costs of healthcare providers, insurance companies, and states over the next 10 years. HHS anticipates that the EFT and ERA rules alone will save up to $4.5 billion.

Currently, health plans send providers electronic payments separately from electronic remittance advice. Physician practices and hospitals use the ERAs to post the payments in their financial systems, but cannot link those postings automatically to the funds transfers. Under the new rules, a trace number will allow providers to link the two transactions, eliminating the time and expense of manual reconciliation.

Cindy Dunn, a senior consultant at MGMA Consulting, told InformationWeek Healthcare that the need to manually connect funds transfer with remittance advice imposes a significant burden on physician practices. So the new regulation will help them, she said.

The same is true for hospitals, said Doug Hires, a health IT consultant who is a partner in Santa Rosa Consulting. Because ERAs are often sent days or weeks before funds are transferred, he said, it's especially troublesome to "re-associate" the two transactions manually. Consequently, he said, the new regulation "is a big deal for hospitals."

However, he added, some coordination and testing will be required to implement the new operating rules, just as with the new HIPAA 5010 transaction set. "There's going to be some modification of systems and processes. Hopefully, the benefits are going to far outweigh the costs of these changes."

While the regulation goes into effect immediately, health plans have until Jan. 1, 2014 to implement the new EFT and ERA standards. They must use the operating rules for eligibility and claims status by Jan. 1, 2013. This will require both payers and vendors of billing systems to update their software, but that wasn't unexpected, Dunn noted.

The Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CORE), a branch of the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcaare (CAQH), which includes insurers and other industry stakeholders, has developed many of the operating rules for HHS. CORE worked with the Electronic Payments Association, a banking group, to create the EFT and ERA standards.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires HHS to write regulations that implement the HIPAA-mandated operating rules over a five-year period ending in 2016. Besides the two interim final rules it has already issued, HHS plans to issue further administrative simplification rules that address:

-- A standard unique identifier for health plans,
-- A standard for claims attachments, and
-- Requirements that health plans certify compliance with all HIPAA standards and operating rules.

In its announcement of the new regulation, HHS cited a 2010 study in Health Affairs that found physicians spend nearly 12% of their revenue from patient care on administrative tasks, including billing and collection. Researchers estimated that simplifying these systems could save four hours per week of professional time per physician and five hours of support staff time every week.

"As a nurse, I know the importance of giving healthcare professionals time to focus on patient care," said Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). "The less time a physician has to spend on paperwork is that much more time that can be devoted to patient care. Having standardized procedures across the healthcare industry can only lead to lower costs and greater efficiencies all around."

When are emerging technologies ready for clinical use? In the new issue of InformationWeek Healthcare, find out how three promising innovations--personalized medicine, clinical analytics, and natural language processing--show the trade-offs. Download the issue now. (Free registration required.)

A Classroom with Difference: A Whole New World of Learning!

2012-01-11T23:16:00.001-08:00

The article talks about flipped classroom, flipped model, flipped learning model. It is of help for those who want to learn about what is elearning, online learning, and flipped learning, etc all about.

Learning in the flipped classroom is something that happens if the learner and / or teacher go against the traditional chalk and talk method, a mind-numbing methodology that has been inflicted for generations on unsuspecting students.

The flipped model has been much talked about in learning circles. Such circles have now come to include and accept ‘learners’ as active participants in the learning process. It essentially depends on using the new technologies to make learning interactive and interesting through the endlessly experiment media. The model seeks to provide a self-paced learning experience to the learner, in effect a ‘tailored’ one so that the learner may delve deeper into topics. The subjects / topics are of interest to him/her or spend more time on a particularly difficult one. Sounds amazing! Some may even rue the fact that they were born much earlier and being unable to take advantage of this newer system sweeping across the learning community.

Why, there may come a time when schools are no longer necessary and the learner “thinks’ his PC or tablet or some other gadget ‘on’ and chooses his / her learning for the time. No school buildings, no principal, no teachers and the least of all no punishments or social ostracism! The resultant tax savings may be channeled to other pressing needs or even subsidizing the studies of a ‘needy’ learner.

One may be forgiven for thinking that all this is fine for affluent societies, what about the millions who are in that part of the world where the required stuff is not available? Remember there was limited internet before the 1990s and yet societies have developed!

Some doubters still question this flipped learning model but these are in an increasing minority (their fear stems from having to relearn or come down from their pedestal of the ‘omniscient’ one).

About emPower

emPower is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

For additional information, please visit http://ping.fm/imQrX.

Media Contact (emPower)
Jason Gaya
marketing@empowerbpo.com

emPower
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502 -400-9374
http://ping.fm/NPKze
http://ping.fm/Zdips

Use OSHA?s Compliance Directive to Evaluate your PPE Program

2012-01-10T03:01:00.005-08:00

You invest a lot of time, effort and money in your personal protective equipment (PPE) program, so you want to be sure you’re meeting OSHA’s expectations.

OSHA’s PPE compliance directive, 29 CFR Part 1910, Subpart I, Enforcement Guidance for Personal Protective Equipment in General Industry (CPL 02-01-050), establishes OSHA’s general enforcement and guidance policy for its PPE standards. It instructs OSHA enforcement personnel on both the agency’s interpretations of those standards and the procedures for enforcing them. You can review the directive for insight on how compliance officers will evaluate your PPE program.

OSHA recognized that recent changes to PPE rules needed clarification to ensure that its enforcement efforts were consistent.

OSHA published a revision to the general PPE requirements at §1910.132 in the April 6, 1994, Federal Register. This revision:

➤ Required employers to select appropriate PPE based on the hazards present or likely to be present in the workplace,

➤ Prohibited the use of defective or damaged PPE and

➤ Established employee training requirements.

This action was followed on Nov. 15, 2007, with the publication of the final rule for employer payment for PPE. A revision in the Sept. 9, 2009, Federal Register updated references to applicable national consensus standards to recognize more recent editions of the standards. On June 8, 2011, OSHA removed the written training certification requirements.

The PPE directive, CPL 02-01-050, took effect on Feb. 10, 2011.

Hazard Assessment

OSHA compliance safety and health officers (CSHO) will ask to see your written certification that a hazard assessment has been conducted and will issue a citation for a violation of §1910.132(d)(2) if there is no written certification. Appendix B of 29 CFR Part 29 Subpart I provides guidance on how to conduct the hazard assessment.

You can rely on a hazard assessment conducted by a previous employer provided that the job conditions and hazards have not substantially changed. If you rely on a previously conducted hazard assessment, the certification must contain the date you determined it was adequate, rather than the date of the actual assessment.

Citations for violations of the hazard assessment requirements at §1910.132(d)(1) will pertain only to eye and face, head, foot and hand protection. The directive clarifies that if another OSHA standard has more specific assessment and selection provisions, then CSHOs will issue citations for violations of the more specific standard. For example, there are PPE hazard assessment and selection requirements in the standards for respiratory protection, permit-required confined spaces, hazardous waste operations and emergency response and bloodborne pathogens.

PPE Selection, Fit and Use

The Sept. 9, 2009, revisions to the PPE standards adopted more recent editions of applicable national consensus standards. The directive instructs CSHOs to cite the standards for the use of eye and face protective devices (§1910.133(b)), head protection (§1910.135(b)) and foot protection (§1910.136(b)) if the PPE selected and provided by the employer doesn’t meet the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or ASTM International (ASTM) standards incorporated by reference in those standards.

However, a citation won’t be issued if the employer demonstrates that a piece of equipment is as effective as that which complies with the incorporated standard. In the preamble to the Sept. 9, 2009, final rule, OSHA stated that this provision for equivalent protection “allows employers to use subsequent national consensus standards that they can demonstrate provide the requisite level of employee protection.” And in the preamble to the proposed rule published on May 17, 2007, OSHA stated: “OSHA has examined the standards for eye and face, head and foot PPE issued by ANSI and ASTM International (ASTM) over the last 40 years. OSHA has found that these standards reflect the state of the art in terms of design safety that existed at the time they were issued. Furthermore, each successive edition of these standards has improved the design features of the PPE.”

Make sure PPE fits properly. You can be cited for a violation of §1910.132(d)(1)(iii) if your PPE doesn’t properly fit each affected employee. Appendix B of 29 CFR Part 29 Subpart I provides non-mandatory guidance for determining and achieving the proper fit. The appendix includes the following:

“5. Fitting the device. Careful consideration must be given to comfort and fit. PPE that fits poorly will not afford the necessary protection. Continued wearing of the device is more likely if it fits the wearer comfortably. Protective devices are generally available in a variety of sizes. Care should be taken to ensure that the right size is selected.

“6. Devices with adjustable features. Adjustments should be made on an individual basis for a comfortable fit that will maintain the protective device in the proper position.”

The key to avoiding a citation for allowing the use of defective or damaged PPE (a violation of §1910.132(e)) is to ensure that, in its present condition, the PPE provides the protection it was designed to provide. When PPE is required, you can allow an employee to voluntarily use PPE that he already owns, but you remain responsible for ensuring that this PPE is not defective or damaged.

If you fail to communicate your PPE selection decisions to each affected employee or fail to conduct PPE demonstrations, you risk a citation for a violation of §1910.132(d)(1)(ii).

Employee Training

OSHA wants employees to fully understand their use of PPE. During an inspection, the CSHO will make sure you’ve trained each employee on the following:

➤ When and what PPE is necessary;

➤ How to don, doff, adjust and wear the PPE;

➤ The limitations of PPE; and

➤ The proper care, maintenance, useful life and disposal of PPE.

The training requirements apply when PPE is used to protect the eyes and face, head, feet and hands. Failure to meet these requirements can bring a citation for a violation of §1910.132(f)(1)(i)–(v).

The CSHO will observe your employees and ask them questions to determine whether each employee who performs work requiring the use of PPE can demonstrate an understanding of the required training and the ability to use the PPE properly. You can be cited for a violation of §1910.132(f)(2) if you fail to meet the training requirements.

Refresher training isn’t required annually or on a set schedule, but be sure to retrain each affected employee when changes in the workplace or in the types of PPE used have made previous training obsolete. CSHOs will cite §1910.132(f)(3) when they discover a lack of necessary refresher training.

The directive indicates that OSHA does allow you to depend on training provided by a previous employer. In this case, the CSHO won’t issue a citation for a training violation if he determines the employee has the requisite knowledge and skill through his or her prior experience.

The directive includes provisions for citing the employer for not having a written certification of training. However, the certification requirement was deleted in a final rule published in the Federal Register on June 8, 2011. You no longer need to have a written certification of PPE training.

Employer Payment

Perhaps the most contentious revision to the PPE standards is the requirement for employer payment. This topic also raises the most questions on OSHA’s expectations.

In general, when PPE is required, you must provide it at no cost to your employees. In enforcing these requirements, CSHOs will first establish the existence of an employer-employee relationship.

The nature and degree of control asserted over the work is one of many factors in the employer-employee relationship. Other factors include the level of skill required, the location of the work, the duration of the relationship between the parties, the method of payment, the individual’s role in hiring and paying assistants, whether the work is the regular business of the employer, the provision of employee benefits and the tax treatment of the individual. A truly self-employed “independent contractor” is not considered to be an “employee” in regard to PPE payment requirements. CSHOs carefully will scrutinize the nature and degree of control asserted over employees involved in day-to-day activities to determine whether they are, in fact, independent contractors.

When you do provide and pay for appropriate PPE necessary to protect your employees, you don’t have to pay for upgraded PPE that an employee wants to provide for his own use. However, if you decide to select and provide PPE that goes beyond OSHA’s minimum requirements, the directive indicates that you have to pay for the “upgraded” PPE.

Exceptions from Payment Requirements

There are exceptions to the payment requirements. For example, you don’t have to pay for non-specialty safety-toe protective footwear or non-specialty prescription safety eyewear if you allow the employee to wear it off the job site. You do need to provide and pay for appropriate non-prescription safety eyewear for the employee, and if specialty prescription eyewear, such as inserts for a respirator facepiece, is necessary, you must pay for it. If metatarsal guards are necessary, you don’t have to provide and pay for safety footwear with built-in metatarsal protection if you provide, at no cost to employees, metatarsal guards that can be attached to the outside of the shoe or boot.

The directive addresses questions that arise concerning workers’ clothing. Long-sleeved shirts, long pants, street shoes and ordinary fabric or leather work gloves may help employees avoid workplace injury and have protective value; however, at §1910.132(h)(4)(ii), this type of clothing is excluded from the payment requirements.

In addition, under §1910.132(h)(4)(iii), you don’t have to pay for ordinary clothing, skin creams or other items used solely for protection from the weather such as winter coats, jackets, gloves and parkas that employees normally would wear to protect themselves from the elements. However, you must pay for clothing needed for protection from unusually severe weather conditions. In addition, clothing used in artificially-controlled environments with extreme hot or cold temperatures, such as freezers, is not considered part of the weather gear exception.

The directive includes two tables to explain the payment requirements:

➤ Examples of PPE for which Employer Payment is Required When Used to Comply with an OSHA Standard and

➤ Examples of PPE and Other Items Exempted from the Employer Payment Requirements.

Paying for Replacement PPE

You must provide replacement PPE at no cost to the employee except when the employee has lost or intentionally damaged the PPE. This exception even applies if it’s a single instance of lost PPE. The directive states that you can consider PPE to be lost if the employee comes to work without it.

To cut down on lost PPE, the directive clarifies that you may require the PPE you’ve provided to remain at the work site in lockers or other storage facilities. If you do allow employees to take PPE off of the job site, you still initially must provide the required PPE at no cost to employees. In addition, the rule doesn’t prohibit you from sending employees home to retrieve the PPE or from charging an employee for replacement PPE when the employee fails to bring the PPE back to the workplace.

If you do allow an employee to voluntarily use appropriate PPE that he already owns, you cannot force the employee to also provide his own replacement PPE. When it’s time to replace employee-owned PPE, it’s likely that you’ll provide and pay for it.

PPE Policies

You’re free to develop and implement workplace rules, such as reasonable and appropriate disciplinary policies, replacement schedules and allowances, to ensure that employees have and use the PPE you’ve provided.

The directive includes many sample citation scenarios for violations of the employer payment requirements, and it has a section on PPE payment questions and answers that you may want to review.

PPE probably is a large part of your safety budget. The use of PPE readily is apparent during an OSHA inspection, and CSHOs are concerned that it’s being used properly. Recent changes to PPE rules have prompted OSHA to update the instructions that CSHOs follow when they evaluate compliance with PPE requirements. You can consider these same instructions as you implement your PPE program. OSHA’s compliance directive, 29 CFR Part 1910, Subpart I, Enforcement Guidance for Personal Protective Equipment in General Industry (CPL 02-01-050) is available on OSHA’s Web site at http://ping.fm/DaHN9

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/45p5G

Test your change management skills

2012-01-10T03:01:00.003-08:00

The Diffusion Simulation Game is a game developed by Indiana University in which players explore strategies that result in the adoption of innovation in a fictitious junior high. The goal is to get stakeholders (the school principal, teachers, and support staff) to adopt peer tutoring. As a player, you can decide whether to gather information, talk to people, visit places, or ask for help as various prompts are presented.

Diffusion innovation as a model for change

The game’s underlying model is the diffusion innovation theory. “Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (Rogers, 2003, p.11). According to this theory, each member in the social system follows a certain process in adopting innovation.

Knowledge: The member learns of the innovation and its attributes

Persuasion: The member adopts either a favorable or unfavorable view of the innovation

Decision: The member engages in activities that lead either to adoption or rejection of the innovation

Implementation: The member adopts and uses the innovation

Confirmation: The member evaluates the results of innovation implementation and integrates it into his/her life

Within a given social system, there will be different innovation adopter types: innovators, early adopters, late majority, and laggards. Opinion leaders and gatekeepers will also influence the uptake of innovation by a social group. When a certain number of members of the social group become adopters, innovation begins to spread rapidly.

How to influence people

Not surprisingly, there’s a certain calculus that informs adoption—primarily a cost-benefit analysis. Do members of the group perceive that the innovation has value? What are the costs of the innovation? How disruptive will it be? Is it compatible with existing values and work flows? How hard is it to use? The likelihood of adoption also is influenced by a group’s tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty and different stakeholders will have different views of costs and benefits.

Implications

The Diffusion Simulation Game illustrates the practical impact of innovation diffusion. Innovation requires both a change agent (you, in this game) and the willingness of a particular social group (the stakeholders in a high school) to adopt innovation. This willingness can be manifested in all sorts of practical ways—just see how difficult it is to even schedule an interview with the prinicipal in this game! Individual members of this social group will be more or less receptive to the idea of change and can be change agents in their own right.

Why should instructional designers care about this?

Instructional designers design learning experiences with change in mind (or they should). This typically implicates stakeholders at multiple levels:

To obtain initial buy-in for the learning experience

To make sure that what’s bought into includes integrating the learning experience into the larger organizational framework so that change is sustainable

To perform the analysis required to make sure that the learning experience can be a vehicle for this change

To connect to learners in a meaningful way so that change is valued and recognized as a participatory effort

Even if you’re not likely to ever try to influence the members of a high school to implement change, the game is worth playing for the more far-reaching lessons it offers.

References

Diffusion simulation game. (2009). Retrieved fromhttp://ping.fm/ATPdH

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.). New York: The Free Press

http://ping.fm/YXwqR

Workplace Performance Services: more than just Training

2012-01-10T03:01:00.001-08:00

In his recent post, Informal Learning , 95% solution, Harold Jarche provides the reason why many workplace learning professionals can only think about “informal learning” and “social learning” in terms of how they can manage them within a blended training solution – rather than simply support them, as they happen, naturally and continuously, in the workflow.

“Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”

But to be fair, it is not just Training Departments that think like this, there are still many people in other parts of the business that believe that “learning” has to be “organised” or “packaged up” (in the form of “training”) to be seen as a valid solution to a problem.

So the issue seems to be twofold:

(1) that LEARNING (in whatever form) is seen as something that has to be designed and managed, to order to be valid, and

(2) that the Learning & Development department’s purpose is only seen as the provider of these “organised learning solutions” (ie training), where success is measured in terms of test scores and course completions.

Undoubtedly some L&D departments are very happy with just organising learning solutions (aka providing Training Services), whilst others prefer to be seen as the part of the business that helps workers do their job – or do them better. And there’s quite a difference between these two activities. The first focuses on designing, managing and measuring LEARNING. The second focuses on supporting and improving PERFORMANCE, where “learning” is seen as the means to the end – not the end goal. But more than this, it also recognises that “organised learning solutions” are just ONE way of solving a business or job performance problem, and there are many other approaches.

The persistent adherence to training solutions (courses and workshops, etc) to address performance problem has been shown to be ineffective in many studies. For example Robert Terry, writing in the Financial Times, Accountability needed for workplace training, in December 2011 says:

“Companies’ spending on training and development accounts for hundreds of billion pounds globally each year. But every year, according to successive empirical studies, only 5 to 20 per cent of what is learnt finds its way back into the workplace. While this failure to transfer and apply new learning in the workplace has long attracted academic interest, practitioners have been slow to change their ways. Despite the imperative that things cannot be managed without being measured, training has been getting off lightly. Surely a training industry that delivers less than 20 per cent cannot be fit for purpose?”

In all likelihood, there was probably nothing instructionally wrong with the courses/training in question; it was more likely to be the case that they were the WRONG solutions for the problems they were intended to solve.

What is more, as training solutions are frequently being seen as costly and time-consuming, and mean taking valuable time away from the job, we are seeing the increasing use of personal devices (iPhones, iPads, etc) as well as public social media tools by individuals and teams to (bypass L&D ) and solve their own performance problems – much more quickly and easily – in the workflow. In the summer of 2011 I wrote a series of Smart Worker postings showing how workers are doing this, and I also commented that by analysing how teams are now addressing their own learning and performance needs, this gives us a good idea how we can better support and improve performance in the workplace for others.

Often people take “performance support” to refer to the production of job aids, BUT (again) that is just one way that this can be done, there are plenty more possibilities. For example, it might involve supporting and encouraging individuals and teams to :

use the Social Web effectively, safely and responsibly to locate useful external informational and instructional resources, as well as to keep up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession

build a trusted Personal Knowledge Network (PKN) of (internal and external) colleagues who they can call upon for advice and support

set up and sustain an internal community of practice – to improve knowledge sharing within their team

co-create and share content within their team – to support one another’s learning and performance

So in terms of my own clients who come to me for help, rather than automatically assuming some form of training is the solution to their problem, I work with the relevant individuals and teams concerned to understand the root cause of their (learning/performance) problem, to identify the most appropriate way it can be solved that suits their working pattern and practices. It might well be that they need some form of organised training solution, but it is usually much more likely that their problem can be solved in a way that enhances their existing work practices – in the workflow. In which case, I then work with the same individuals and teams involved to put the solution in place. Part of this process also considers how they will measure the success of this new activity, and this is usually framed in terms of productivity or performance improvements.

As for identifying what the most appropriate solution to a performance problem is, there is no single methodology for doing this – as Harold says about supporting informal learning at work:

“It requires tools, processes and methodologies from a variety of disciplines. There are methods from knowledge management, organizational development and human performance technology, for example, that are quite useful in supporting informal learning. The modern workplace is a complex adaptive system. There is no single approach that can be used all the time.”

But one thing has become clear to me, to be successful, it is not about using traditional “command and control” approaches (that are employed in most training solutions to try and force people to learn), but it is much more about encouraging people to engage in these new activities to support one another as they (learn) to do their jobs – in many cases helping them to “connect and collaborate”. And this, of course is a key feature of building and supporting the collaborative culture of a social business.

Obviously, some L&D departments (and workplace learning professionals) will want to remain focused on providing Training Services for their organisations and be quite happy for other business functions to provide performance support services to help their people work smarter. Other L&D departments have already expanded their services to fulfil all these activities, and more are beginning to do so too.

Although one step might well be rebadging the department as a Workplace Performance Services Department in order to send out the right message to the rest of the organisation, it will take more than just a name change to be successful. Since the new department will be offering a range of new services (I’ve only mentioned a couple of them here), this will require new roles, new practices and new skills.

This article was originally posted at http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2012/01/09/workplace-performance-services-more-than-just-training/

Give Students Mobile Devices to Maximize Their Learning Time

2012-01-06T05:26:00.003-08:00

The Education Department’s 2010 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) presents a transformational vision for 21st century education, depicting how new technologies can help people learn lifelong and “life-wide” - in libraries and museums and their homes, and through interactions with people in their neighborhood and community.

In particular, mobile devices enable elearning anywhere and anytime, moving education beyond the industrial era model, where classrooms are the primary place of learning, the school day is the primary educational time, and the teacher is the primary source of information.

We know that students’ lives outside school are filled with technology, giving them 24/7 mobile access to information and allowing them to participate in online social networks and communities where people worldwide share ideas, collaborate, and learn new things. Our education system should leverage students’ interest in technology and the time they spend learning informally outside the regular school hours to extend learning time in a way that motivates them even more.

Mobile broadband devices now have six senses:

1. Knowing where you are

2. Interacting with networks

3. Sensing local content and services

4. Discovering relevant things

5. Enhancing your surroundings with information and simulation

6. Learning your interests, as well as how and with whom you like to learn

This new capacity for learning, which is infused with global information, is a powerful way of complementing the traditional model of learning, which is isolated from the world in classroom settings.

Cellphones, tablets and other mobile devices now provide access to a much broader and more flexible set of learning resources than is available in classrooms. They also create connections to a wider and more flexible set of “educators,” including parents, informal educators, and community-based coaches, tutors, and mentors. And, learning experiences can be customized for individual learners with content and instructional styles designed to fit the interests and experience of each person.

For example, when students are learning online, there are multiple opportunities to use technology for assessment. As students work, the system can capture information about their problem-solving sequences, knowledge, and strategies, as reflected by the information they select or input, the number of attempts they make, the number of hints and feedback given, and the time it takes them to solve a problem.

But there are some limitations. Four key areas must be resolved to realize the power of mobile broadband for ubiquitous learning:

Devices and infrastructure: How can we best balance educational investments between wired computers and the emerging infrastructure of wireless mobile devices?

Safety and privacy: How can we use internet access and digital student data to enhance education, while preventing various forms of abuse?

Digital assets and assessments: How can we drive innovation in digital learning materials and services when the education market is notoriously fragmented and slow to adapt, and when the strengths and limits of mobile devices for learning are not well understood?

Human capital: How can we empower educators and other stakeholders to realize the potential of anytime, anyplace mobile learning through evolutionary, revolutionary, and disruptive transformations that move beyond the model of industrial era schooling?

And, barriers in each of these areas create difficulties for progress in the others.

A ubiquitous technology infrastructure that supports anytime, anyplace learning is the hallmark of a 21st century educational system. I believe that every student and educator should have a mobile broadband device, with training and support for its optimal usage to empower learning. As discussed in the NETP, policy makers should systematically explore mechanisms to fund such an infrastructure for every district, school, and student, regardless of economic status.

Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Each fall, he co-hosts a major conference for Qualcomm on mobile learning.

Mobile learning ? the state of play

2012-01-06T05:26:00.001-08:00

Piers Lea, CEO, discusses the current and 2012 landscape for mobile learning.It is nearly two years since I gave the opinion, on this blog, that it was time for organisations to embrace mobile learning. Now in 2012, demand for mobile services is growing, not just for learning, but throughout the enterprise.A survey we conducted recently among learning professionals shows that 94% of organisations are between the stage of vesting interest in mobile technology and the full implementation stage.

This is part of a wider movement on behalf of organisations to harness the power of mobile services. Two principal drivers underpin this movement. End-users are demanding mobile access, while board members and senior execs are seeing mobile as a USP – a game changer – and creating pressure to leverage their use across the business. This positive pressure, as smartphones become ubiquitous and services need to be multi-platform, means that organisations need to be aware of how they can supply at scale (and not drown in individual apps).

According to the 2011 iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report, each year the average smartphone/tablet owning employee works 240 hours longer than the general workforce. Smartphone adoption is now 94% of the global workforce, with tablet adoption at 41%.

According to the same report, travel is where mobile devices can really prove their worth with 49% of mobile employees expecting to spend more than a month each year on business travel. Although 18% expect to travel less next year, 27% expect to travel more – the indications are that if small pieces of performance-related training were available, then work time away from the desk would be a great opportunity.

When on the move, speed of connectivity is of significant importance for employees – nearly 68% say they would pay for a faster connection when a slower free one is available. IT departments need to ensure that it’s easy for their workforce to connect to WI-FI networks when on national and international business travel.

One good piece of news for IT departments from the report: they needn’t be too worried about employees requiring high quantities of support and training for mobile learning; according to iPass, the vast majority are already using their devices competently. And what do they use them for currently? Note-taking apps, social media for work, contract/contact management, office suites and web conferencing are the most popular applications being independently downloaded by mobile workers.

With the device skills, the right awareness and also the willingness to use m-learning in place, it seems, as far as end-users are concerned, this report should only add further support to the drive for adoption with mobile. To which we would add only one caveat. Learning has to be designed properly, of course, and delivered well, as part of a considered and planned architecture for mobile learning and communications.

This article was originally posted at http://www.line.co.uk/viewpoints/mobile-learning-the-state-of-play/

Supporting performance by supplying the right type of learning

2012-01-04T05:53:00.003-08:00

Author and performance support expert, Bob Mosher, is presenting at January’s Learning Technologies Conference in London on supporting performance by supplying the right type of learning - at the time learners need it.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Bob Mosher is presenting at Learning Technologies 2012 on how L&D supports performance"][/caption]

The Learning Technologies Conference in January is to challenge L&D professionals to get to grips with their role in enabling performance and has invited author and performance support expert, Bob Mosher, to address the conference.

Conference Chair Donald Taylor, said: “Performance is what learning at work is all about, yet too often we pay it only lip service. Often that is because while the business of L&D seems clear - often the production and delivery of good learning materials is at its heart - the route to ensuring performance looks vague and ill-defined. Bob Mosher will detail a very clear view of how to ensure that the L&D function is supporting performance by supplying the right type of learning, using the right tools, at the five particular moments of learning need.”

Most learning programmes focus on teaching what is new, and later delivering more information. ‘New’ and ‘more’, however, these are only two of the five ‘moments of need’ defined by performance support expert Bob Mosher. And whereas ‘new’ and ‘more’ are often associated with traditional delivery methods, performance across all five moments can be supported by any of a wide range of learning tools. In this engaging and practical session, Bob takes us through the process of ensuring the approach of L&D professionals supports learners effectively at all five points, with tips on how to choose the right tool for the right moment.

The ‘Learning’ and performance’’ session takes place on Wednesday 25 January 2012, from 14:00 - 15:00. To book places for January’s conference, visit the Learning Technologies Conference programme and bookings web site.

To keep up to date with all the latest news and January 2012 event developments, visit www.learningtechnologies.co.uk and www.learningandskillsevents.com

Smartphones, E-Readers Replacing Textbooks

2012-01-04T05:53:00.001-08:00

What's the Latest Development?

Portable digital technology is forever changing the face of eduction. Smartphones and e-readers enable learning anyplace, anytime so teachers can better immerse their students in the day's lesson. And compared to a textbook, a tablet computer seems like magic, summoning up unfathomable amounts of information while displaying colorful and easy-to-read graphics. The interactive and entertaining qualities of new smart devices are inspiring students to take more control over their education.

What's the Big Idea?

Never before have schools faced the question of whether or not to buy textbooks. When electronic information is so readily available, so up-to-date, so much cheaper than buying hard-bound copies, textbooks become difficult to justify. The trend in education is reflected in society at large. The number of e-books sold online has seen a six-fold increase in the last year; Amazon now sells 2.5 e-books for every hard copy. The loss of textbooks will forever change the feel of education but it opens up many new opportunities.

The Six 21st Century Skills You REALLY Need

2011-12-30T01:55:00.003-08:00

Given the work that I do, I'm a sucker for skill lists. As our work worlds grow ever more complex and challenging, it seems that the skills themselves become more complex too.

Increasingly, though, I've begun to believe that these lists are distracting us from the real skills of success. While working with big data, operating in virtual teams and"cognitive load management"all sound great, I think there are far more fundamental skills we should be developing first.

My 21st Century Skills List

I think there are 6 fundamental skills we need to develop for success in this or any other century. I would also argue that we are not nearly as good at these skills as we think we are.

In no particular order, my 6 21st Century skills are:

Self-Awareness

Asking Questions

Empathic Listening

Authentic Conversation

Reflection

Seeking and working with multiple perspectives

Let's take a closer look.

1. Self-Awareness

We humans can be amazingly robotic. And by that I mean responding to commands and conditions without really questioning what we are doing or why we are doing it. This habit of going through life without really being aware of our own internal motivations, mental and emotional habits, assumptions and belief systems is remarkably common and remarkably damaging.

The first and most fundamental skill we need to develop is the ability to look inside to see how we respond to the external world. What are our values systems, assumptions and mental models? What strengths and gifts do we need to bring into the world? What are our habitual blind spots? What are our insecurities, vulnerabilities and sore points?

All of these aspects of ourselves, when they are unexamined and unacknowledged, contribute in major ways to our ability to function in the world. The more aware we are of our own mental and emotional processes, the more skilled we will be in all other areas.

2. Asking Questions

I agree with Seth Godin that as adults, it is often stunning how few questions we ask. I'm not sure why. Maybe we think we know the answers already. Or maybe we just lose our sense of curiosity and wonder about the world.

What I do know is that our ability to ask good questions is critical to success, not only professionally but in our personal lives as well. And it's a skill we have to cultivate and refine, because the questions we ask will frame the solutions we find.

We first need to re-learn the practice of questioning, period. Too often we accept what we are told, without going any further.

We also need to learn how to ask different kinds of questions--important questions, positive questions, reflective questions. We need to carefully cultivate and nurture our curiosity and use it to keep asking "why?," how?" and "what if?"

We need to look at how we ask questions, when we ask them and what kinds of questions we ask. Developing our ability to question, rather than to simply accept what is, is the foundation of growth and development. It is also at the heart of creativity and innovation.

3. Empathic Listening

Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we should "first seek to understand." He calls this empathic listening and it is the most difficult form of listening for us to cultivate. It is not waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can relate your story. It is not listening to find places where you agree or disagree. It is something much deeper than that:

The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communications experts estimate, in fact, that only 10% of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60% by our body language. In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.

Raise your hand if you regularly engage in this form of listening. I know I don't, but that when I do, amazing things happen as a result. (See this excerpt for more on empathic listening)

4. Authentic Conversation

Creating the space for authentic, meaningful conversations is one of the most valuable skills we can develop. Last week I wrote about moving from being a hero to being a host and when I talk about authentic conversation, I mean our ability to act as a host and participant in deep, authentic discussions.

Conversations are how we learn and how we do our work. They are how we identify and solve problems and how we build collaboration and community. The capacity to create and hold the space for authentic discussion is under-valued and much needed in work and in our personal lives.

Self-awareness, questioning and empathic listening all contribute to our ability to engage in authentic, meaningful conversation. But there are other related skills and strategies we must employ.

Our ability to host and engage in authentic discussions is critical for success in and out of work.

5. Reflection

On one level, the ability to reflect on your actions and work could be considered part of self-awareness. However I see reflective practice as something related, but separate. Self-awareness is one thing we can develop through and as part of our reflective practices, but reflection also is a skill that can help us develop more technical expertise, too.

Reflection is both an internal, introspective process, as well as a social one. Reflection can happen alone or in groups. It can happen while we are in the midst of action, as well as after the fact.

Reflective practice helps us learn from experience and use our failures and mistakes as fodder for development, rather than for self-flagellation and blame. Reflective practitioners know what they don't know and can devise experiments and activities to help them continue developing.

The ability to adapt to ever-changing and more complex environments is directly related to our capacity to effectively reflect on what we do and how we do it.

6. Seeking and Working with Multiple Perspectives

Homophily--our human tendency to connect to people like ourselves--is both a blessing and a curse. It's important for us to find and connect to our tribes, yes. But we also benefit from our ability to seek out and work effectively with a diversity of perspectives and frames of reference. This is even more true in a global economy.

I've written before about combating homophily and even as I've become increasingly aware of the negative impact of connecting to only those people who share my perspectives, I still find it difficult to intentionally create space for working with multiple viewpoints. Like most people, I tend to see people who have a different worldview as being "others." I either want to convert them to my own viewpoint or ignore them, neither of which is beneficial.

As a 21st century skill, I think we have to look at not only how we listen to and engage with people who see the world differently, we also need to look at the strategies we use to find and connect with them in the first place. How intentional are we about diversifying our networks? How effective are we? And more importantly, how willing are we to be shaped and influenced by these differences?

From a career perspective, I think it is these 6 skills that offer the most "bang for your buck." They are the skills needed for success in all aspects of our lives (not just at work) and they are core to most other skillsets.

As I think about 2012 and how I want to develop myself, it is these core areas that I will focus on. What do think? How do these skills resonate with you? And what are you doing to develop them?

This article was originally posted at http://www.michelemmartin.com/thebambooprojectblog/2011/12/the-six-21st-century-skills-you-really-need.html

Health organizations not prepared for HIPAA audits

2011-12-30T01:55:00.001-08:00

A new survey's report comes as federal authorities say they would expand enforcement of patient privacy and security requirements.

In July, the Dept. of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights made clear that it would start doing a better job at making sure entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act were taking the necessary steps to protect patient data and comply with patient privacy and security laws.

What have health care organizations been doing since then to prepare for the tighter enforcement? Not much, according to the results of a survey of more than 400 HIPAA compliance officers and health information management directors.

In November, HCPro, a health care regulation and compliance consultancy firm in Danvers, Mass., conducted a survey to gauge how prepared health care organizations are for a HIPAA audit. In a Dec. 2 blog post on the survey's findings, HCPro said it found that only 17% of those surveyed were fully prepared, and 70% said they were only "somewhat prepared." A full report on the survey's findings is scheduled to be published in January 2012.

These findings come just four months after the HHS Office for Civil Rights, the department tasked with enforcing HIPAA compliance, awarded a $9 million contract to the McLean, Va.-based consulting firm KPMG to create an audit program. It will verify that health care organizations, payers and business associates are prepared to meet strengthened HIPAA requirements that were laid out in the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Part of KPMG's plan is to conduct random, on-site audits of 150 organizations by Dec. 31, 2012.

According to the contract, the site visits would include interviews with organization leaders such as chief information officers, privacy officers, legal counsel, health information management officers and medical records directors; an examination of the organization's physical features and operations, and its consistency in following policy; and observations of compliance with regulatory requirements.

Organization leaders told HCPro in its survey that they were not fully prepared for these audits for several reasons, including a lack of commitment to HIPAA compliance by senior management. One survey respondent, according to HCPro's blog posting, said most organizations say they don't have time to implement HIPAA regulations on a regular basis. "There needs to be an outside agency coming into the hospital and interviewing the employees on a regular basis," the respondent said.

Although the number of entities KPMG plans to audit is small compared with the number of HIPAA-covered entities in the U.S., any organization could be chosen, according to HHS. KPMG was instructed to audit a wide range of covered entities in terms of scope and size, and could include anyone from individual physicians to business associates.

Under the HIPAA Security Rules, organizations must complete a risk analysis and have policies in place detailing their approach to patient privacy and security and sanctions for those who do not comply. Experts say not only do organizations need to prepare those documents for the possibility of a random audit by KPMG, but the Office of Civil Rights also has the authority to conduct an audit based on complaints made by patients who feel their privacy was violated.

This article was originally posted at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/12/19/bisf1222.htm

Making Education Fun Through Game-Based Learning

2011-12-26T02:56:00.005-08:00

Proponents say the nascent technology already is transforming the educational experience. Here’s how.

Like a lot of teachers, Lucas Gillispie had no problem with the textbook material he taught to his high school students. His biggest challenge during his seven years in the classroom was connecting with the teenagers in his classes.

His solution, it turned out, was right in front of him. Or, rather, on his own computer. “Video games were always a point of connection between me and my students,” Gillispie explains. “It was an easy topic of conversation — the spark that got things started for me at school.”

So when the game-loving teacher became the instructional technology coordinator for Pender County (N.C.) Schools three years ago, linking his two worlds in the curriculum seemed like a no-brainer. “I started looking at game-based learning [GBL] research,” he says, “and for ways to leverage video games in the classroom.” The district had already integrated technology, including interactive whiteboards, in its 16 schools, so energizing the elearning process via gaming wasn’t that radical an idea.

By May 2009, Gillispie was seeking buy-in from his district’s management team to give 15 Cape Fear Middle School students a chance to get together after school and play World of Warcraft (WOW), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with more than 10 million subscribers. The idea was to link the game to things the students already were learning in their language arts classes. For example, one teacher related one of the students’ “quests” to The Hobbit, which they were reading and writing about in class. The team “understood the goal to reach disaffected kids,” he recalls. “They said, ‘We don’t understand the gaming jargon, but the focus is good for kids. Go for it.’ ”

Together with teachers and the school’s principal at the time, Edith Skipper, Gillispie identified students to invite and launched the program in fall 2009. Participants linked in to the game using school computers and quickly strengthened their language and problem-solving skills.

“We saw amazing things,” Gillispie says. “We had kids who increased their attendance and actually wanted to go to school so they wouldn’t miss the club [meeting]. We had kids with social communication issues improve through the program. The kids owned this project, and we encouraged them to set the direction.”

The program was so successful that at the end of the school year, the principal suggested expanding its reach. “She would come observe the students playing WOW and was amazed” by their enthusiasm, he says. “These were students who used to ‘check out’ in the classroom. She asked what we needed to do to take this to the next level and make it a part of the regular school day for more students.”

That summer, Gillispie and teacher Craig Lawson developed a curriculum to incorporate the game into eighth-grade language arts, reading and writing lessons at Cape Fear. Today, students play WOW every day.

Gillispie says the results have been just as remarkable, with students showing demonstrable improvement in these subject areas and in their leadership, teamwork, communications and citizenship skills. “I call it ninja teaching,” he explains. “Kids are learning, but they don’t realize they’re learning.”

97% Percentage of American children ages 12 to 17 who play video games SOURCE: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Embracing Gaming

Schools around the world are introducing computer-based GBL in the classroom, and for good reason: It’s a great way to engage students with something they participate in by choice during their downtime. “It’s a growing trend all across education,” says Larry Johnson, Ph.D., CEO of the New Media Consortium, which spearheads the annual Horizon Report: K–12 Edition. (In both 2010 and 2011, the report identified GBL as an emerging technology that will impact teaching and learning in the next two to three years.)

“Games are really effective for increasing the engagement level of lots of people,” Johnson explains. “We’re no longer thinking of games as something only kids do — we’re in our third generation of people who have grown up with these games.”

Quest to Learn, a New York City public school that’s based on the principles of game design and integration in the classroom, is one such example. “Each trimester, in each class, students are given a mission — a complex problem they can’t solve at that time,” Co-Director Arana Shapiro says of the 3-year-old school’s unconventional learning model, in which students play games to introduce and reinforce skills.

The designed quests that students embark upon are very sequenced, Shapiro continues, with each one giving them “a piece of information they need to solve the complex problem. Students ‘level up’ only after they complete each quest.”

The approach mirrors how many video games work, and is a natural way for educators to think, set and achieve goals for students who have grown up playing on their computers.

“The idea of play in learning has been around for a long time,” Shapiro says. “For some reason, it ends after early elementary school. What we’ve seen is that [GBL keeps] kids much more engaged than traditional learning. The content is the same; it’s a different vehicle to get them to the same place, and they get there with a deeper understanding.”

It’s not always easy, though. “We get push-back from people who think game play is too challenging or see it as entertainment, not education,” says Atsusi “2c” Hirumi, Ph.D., co-chair of the Instructional Design and Technology program at the University of Central Florida. “They worry that students may focus too much time on figuring out how to play and beat the game, rather than the educational content.”

But play is an important method for learning, Hirumi adds. “We play with objects and concepts to see how they work. If we mess up, it typically doesn’t hold serious consequences. Making failure fun is an important part of games and should also play a role in learning.”

There are other obstacles, though. One is cost: Game subscriptions are expensive. Teachers who don’t understand the technology’s learning benefits also can hinder its expansion.

Game On

Yet, GBL proponents remain hopeful about its future. Gillispie hopes to extend the curriculum he developed for Pender County middle schoolers to Heide Trask Senior High School, one of the district’s four high schools, this semester.

To maximize the benefits, gaming “needs to be embedded in everything we do,” he says. In Pender County, for example, students finish their quests and then journal about them during the school day. The teachers then grade or edit the journals and incorporate their comments into grammar and writing lessons.

“It’s fascinating to hear the kids excited about this,” Gillispie continues. “We have kids asking teachers if they’re going to take time over the weekend to put the next level up for them. We have kids logging in on Friday nights to finish their quests.”

Every once in a while, Gillispie is floored by the impact his efforts have had on students. “Our assistant superintendent recently got a phone call from one of our parents,” he says. “I thought the jig was up, because he said she had some concerns. But the concern was that her child is moving up to the high school next year and won’t have this program. She wanted to know what was going to keep him anchored and passionate about school. It broke my heart.”

Defining “Good” in Gaming

Acccording to research summarized by the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College, the best educational games share these five qualities:

Continuous challenge: The game must present challenges that lead to other challenges to keep students hooked and moving forward.

Interesting story line: This livens up the competition and makes players more motivated to succeed.

Flexibility: Offering multiple ways to achieve each goal lets students work out their own strategies.

Immediate, useful rewards: At the end of each challenge, successful players should be rewarded with new capabilities, a new area to explore or a new task. Such benefits are “surprisingly motivating,” experts say.

Combining fun and realism: Good games incorporate fantasy with realistic qualities to keep kids engaged and thinking.

This article was originally posted at http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2011/12/making-education-fun-through-game-based-learning

Red Flags Rule Compliance: The Feds May Be The Least Of Your Concerns

2011-12-26T02:56:00.003-08:00

After several false begins, the FTC has finally initiated enforcement of the Honest and Correct Credit Transactions Act’s, Crimson Red Flags Rule Compliance, and has placed the burden of policing identification theft activity squarely on the shoulders of both big and small businesses. However, the FTC could be the least of your issues if you happen to originate credit score for an identification thief as a result of attorneys across the country have been eagerly awaiting this dangerous and virtually inconceivable regulation. Your downside? Verifying the identification of your customer. If you don’t have required and accepted procedures in place to do so, it might cost you the whole lot you’ve got ever labored for. Your Required Crimson Flags Rule Policy & Program. First, your operation should develop and implement a Crimson Flags Rule Policy which should embody 4 required key elements in addition to other laws and points that must be addressed. To demonstrate the importance the FTC places on the Rule, your operation’s Board of Directors is required to approve your Crimson Flags Rule Policy and Program. For these operations with out a board, a committee of senior management should approve the preliminary Program and monitor it on an annual basis.

But don’t be misled! Simply downloading a “template” from the internet might presumably get you off the hook with the feds, nevertheless it in all probability will not suffice in litigation with an identification theft sufferer’s lawyer. Attorneys already view this regulation as a “cash cow”, and if one among your prospects points the finger at your organization as a result of somebody was using their identification unchallenged, relaxation assured the sufferer’s attorney will request your written Crimson Flags Rule Policy and documentation of required employees training. If you don’t have a Policy, or it is poorly written, the plaintiff will most likely allege a breach of responsibility to protect a shopper’s identification info, or in other phrases, “wilful non-compliance”, which is as bad as it sounds. Required Employees Compliance Training. The Rule additionally requires your operation to supply formal Crimson Flags Rule compliance training in your staff… and be capable to show it! If your thought of “training” is nothing more than permitting your employees to read your Policy, that faint odor of diesel gasoline you smell is from the bus about to run over you. Let’s be honest. The federal government is asking you to do the inconceivable to prevent identification theft. Your only protection, not if it occurs, but when it occurs, is that you have put forth a valid effort to prevent it from occurring.

Actually, virtually all compliance litigation, federal or civil, comes down to one basic question: “…did the business do the whole lot within cause to prevent this unlawful act from occurring, and if that’s the case, the place is the proof?” Any attorney price his pinstripes will tell you that there are two keys in a compliance litigation protection – periodic training and documentation. Your operation ought to prepare newly hired workers as part of their orientation, and all employees at the least every year, full with documentation, with a purpose to fend off the potential for huge fines, penalties and jury awards. The Identification Data Verification Process. The days of simply making a copy of a shopper’s driver’s license as a premise for identification verification are over. Throughout the Crimson Flags Rule, there are 26 listed potential pink flags dangers that designated institutions should contemplate when performing a lined transaction. In theory, if any of those flags exist within the identifying info introduced by an individual, what you are promoting should search outside third celebration sources to confirm the identification of the person. The problem is that virtually all of those potential pink flags are open to interpretation… in other phrases, a guess!

What one among your employees views as a pink flag, another employees member might not, and due to this fact your nicely-intentioned effort to grow to be compliant is undermined and may cost you. And if that is not enough to trigger you concern, there’s the potential for allegations of bias or discrimination if you happen to do not perform the same identification verification course of on every customer opening a new lined account. It isn’t exhausting to think about a plaintiff accusing what you are promoting of discrimination because you carried out an identification verification scan on them because of their ethnic heritage, and not on most Caucasians. Picture an identification theft sufferer’s attorney ripping through all your information within the discovery part of litigation like a kid attacking presents on Christmas morning. For what function, you ask? How about the fact that you carried out identification verification procedures on 80% of your minority candidates, but on 20% of the time for Caucasians. The smart thing is to take the guesswork out of trying to interpret pink flags in your customer’s identifying info by utilizing a compliant identification verification scan, and whereas we’re on this topic, it may not be wise to depend on the one included in your client’s credit score report.

The Rule requires identification verification from outside knowledge sources, or as the Rule states; “… cannot be from info contained in a shopper credit score report, or info typically contained in a wallet.” Authenticating Your Buyer’s Identification Through Challenge Questions. If you have not developed an involuntary twitch by now, this will put you over the edge. There’s a distinction between verifying the identifying info introduced by an individual, and really authenticating the identification of the individual presenting the information. For example, the person applying for a loan might in actual fact be an identification thief providing you with stolen information. The remedy is to concern “Challenge Questions” to authenticate that the individual is in actual fact whom they signify themselves to be. The questions ought to be framed in such a matter that only the individual whose identification is in question can answer, and in a well timed manner. And once more, in response to the Rule, these questions cannot be shaped from info contained in a shopper credit score report or info typically contained in a wallet, but from outside knowledge sources such as the SSN Verification Service, The SSN Demise Grasp File, state, federal, and international knowledge bases to verify DOB, all associated addresses, telephone number assignment, etc.

All of this might take a complete day for just one client, or maybe it is time to contemplate a compliant Identification Verification Service that additionally offers Challenge Questions. Both way, if you happen to concern Challenge Questions on one, it is best to do it on all to distance your self from allegations of bias and discrimination. Your Lender Relationship. The Crimson Flags Rule prices your lenders with the duty of ensuring your compliance with the Crimson Flags Rule, and beneath the Rule, they might do so by contract. This gives your lender the precise to inspect and audit your procedures at any time, and already Brokers across the country have been denied companies until they’re deemed by the lender to be compliant. Non-Compliance Fines And Penalties. The Federal Trade Commission has made it abundantly clear that compliance with the Crimson Flags Rule will not be merely a suggestion, and has indicated they may employ “rolling enforcement” to ensure this regulation will not be taken lightly. Assuming that “rolling enforcement” means unannounced investigations and audits, here is what you can sit up for in case you are discovered to be non-compliant:

Federal fines for non-compliance are up to $3,5000 per occurrence. In other phrases, if what you are promoting performs 1,000 non-compliant transactions in a year, the high-quality will be $3.5 million.

Your state attorney basic could possibly file class-motion fits beneath “unfair and deceptive acts and practices” theories which normally permit both actual and punitive damages.

You might be held accountable for actual losses of a sufferer ($92,893 average) if you can’t produce a substantial written Crimson Flags Rule Policy and documented proof of required employees training.

In Summary. It’s no secret the FTC intends to come down exhausting on non-compliant businesses in their rounds of “rolling enforcement”, but more importantly, non-public attorneys eagerly await your wilful non-compliance. The same proliferation of hi-tech software program to make businesses more efficient, can also be out there to the identification theft prison element to phony up driver’s licenses, tax data, utility bills, credit cards, etc., for the purpose of providing you with false identification information. It’s an inconceivable activity to prevent identification theft – you realize it, I do know it, and the federal government is aware of it, and your only protection is to place forth your finest effort to grow to be compliant, and once more, be capable to show it with documentation. Don’t make the mistake of pondering this regulation is impotent or will simply fade away.

The drumbeat from shoppers concerning identification theft grows louder every day, and surely more laws will observe together with the horror stories of these institutions discovered to be non-compliant. Make sure that one of those horror stories is not about you; the perfect chance for you to get it right is from the beginning. NOTE: The content material on this article will not be providing authorized advice and is intended as an preliminary resource guide only. Moreover, the content material will not be intended to answer specific questions or counsel suitability of motion in a selected case or circumstance. The author recommends the reader seek the advice of authorized counsel for guidance concerning this compliance issue.

This article was originally posted at http://www.solutionfinder.org.uk/red-flags-rule-compliance-the-feds-may-be-the-least-of-your-concerns/

The Future of Moral Machines

2011-12-26T02:56:00.001-08:00

A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.”

The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play about artificial factory workers rising against their human overlords. Just 22 years later, Isaac Asimov invented the “Three Laws of Robotics” to serve as a hierarchical ethical code for the robots in his stories: first, never harm a human being through action or inaction; second, obey human orders; last, protect oneself. From the first story in which the laws appeared, Asimov explored their inherent contradictions. Great fiction, but unworkable theory.

Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do.

¶The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word “robot” is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent “technological singularity” in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. Many Singularitarians assume a lot, not the least of which is that intelligence is fundamentally a computational process. The techno-optimists among them also believe that such machines will be essentially friendly to human beings. I am skeptical about the Singularity, and even if “artificial intelligence” is not an oxymoron, “friendly A.I.” will require considerable scientific progress on a number of fronts.

The neuro- and cognitive sciences are presently in a state of rapid development in which alternatives to the metaphor of mind as computer have gained ground. Dynamical systems theory, network science, statistical learning theory, developmental psychobiology and molecular neuroscience all challenge some foundational assumptions of A.I., and the last 50 years of cognitive science more generally. These new approaches analyze and exploit the complex causal structure of physically embodied and environmentally embedded systems, at every level, from molecular to social. They demonstrate the inadequacy of highly abstract algorithms operating on discrete symbols with fixed meanings to capture the adaptive flexibility of intelligent behavior. But despite undermining the idea that the mind is fundamentally a digital computer, these approaches have improved our ability to use computers for more and more robust simulations of intelligent agents — simulations that will increasingly control machines occupying our cognitive niche. If you don’t believe me, ask Siri.

¶This is why, in my view, we need to think long and hard about machine morality. Many of my colleagues take the very idea of moral machines to be a kind of joke. Machines, they insist, do only what they are told to do. A bar-robbing robot would have to be instructed or constructed to do exactly that. On this view, morality is an issue only for creatures like us who can choose to do wrong. People are morally good only insofar as they must overcome the urge to do what is bad. We can be moral, they say, because we are free to choose our own paths.

There are big themes here: freedom of will, human spontaneity and creativity, and the role of reason in making good choices — not to mention the nature of morality itself. Fully human-level moral agency, and all the responsibilities that come with it, requires developments in artificial intelligence or artificial life that remain, for now, in the domain of science fiction. And yet…

Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do. Entrepreneurs are actively developing robots for home care of the elderly. Robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers are already mass market items. Self-driving cars are not far behind. Mercedes is equipping its 2013 model S-Class cars with a system that can drive autonomously through city traffic at speeds up to 25 m.p.h. Google’s fleet of autonomous cars has logged about 200,000 miles without incident in California and Nevada, in conditions ranging from surface streets to freeways. By Google’s estimate, the cars have required intervention by a human co-pilot only about once every 1,000 miles and the goal is to reduce this rate to once in 1,000,000 miles. How long until the next bank robber will have an autonomous getaway vehicle?

This is autonomy in the engineer’s sense, not the philosopher’s. The cars won’t have a sense of free will, not even an illusory one. They may select their own routes through the city but, for the foreseeable future, they won’t choose their own paths in the grand journey from dealership to junkyard. We don’t want our cars leaving us to join the Peace Corps, nor will they any time soon. But as the layers of software pile up between us and our machines, they are becoming increasingly independent of our direct control. In military circles, the phrase “man on the loop” has come to replace “man in the loop,” indicating the diminishing role of human overseers in controlling drones and ground-based robots that operate hundreds or thousands of miles from base. These machines need to adjust to local conditions faster than can be signaled and processed by human tele-operators. And while no one is yet recommending that decisions to use lethal force should be handed over to software, the Department of Defense is sufficiently committed to the use of autonomous systems that it has sponsored engineers and philosophers to outline prospects (.pdf report, 108 pages) for ethical governance of battlefield machines.

Joke or not, the topic of machine morality is here to stay. Even modest amounts of engineered autonomy make it necessary to outline some modest goals for the design of artificial moral agents. Modest because we are not talking about guidance systems for the Terminator or other technology that does not yet exist. Necessary, because as machines with limited autonomy operate more often than before in open environments, it becomes increasingly important to design a kind of functional morality that is sensitive to ethically relevant features of those situations. Modest, again, because this functional morality is not about self-reflective moral agency — what one might call “full” moral agency — but simply about trying to make autonomous agents better at adjusting their actions to human norms. This can be done with technology that is already available or can be anticipated within the next 5 to 10 years.

The project of designing artificial moral agents provokes a wide variety of negative reactions, including that it is preposterous, horrendous, or trivial. My co-author Wendell Wallach and I have been accused of being, in our book “Moral Machines,” unimaginatively human-centered in our views about morality, of being excessively optimistic about technological solutions, and of putting too much emphasis on engineering the machines themselves rather than looking at the whole context in which machines operate.

In response to the charge of preposterousness, I am willing to double down. Far from being an exercise in science fiction, serious engagement with the project of designing artificial moral agents has the potential to revolutionize moral philosophy in the same way that philosophers’ engagement with science continuously revolutionizes human self-understanding. New insights can be gained from confronting the question of whether and how a control architecture for robots might utilize (or ignore) general principles recommended by major ethical theories. Perhaps ethical theory is to moral agents as physics is to outfielders — theoretical knowledge that isn’t necessary to play a good game. Such theoretical knowledge may still be useful after the fact to analyze and adjust future performance.

Even if success in building artificial moral agents will be hard to gauge, the effort may help to forestall inflexible, ethically-blind technologies from propagating. More concretely, if cars are smart enough to navigate through city traffic, they are certainly smart enough to detect how long they have been parked outside a bar (easily accessible through the marriage of G.P.S. and the Internet) and to ask you, the driver, to prove you’re not drunk before starting the engine so you can get home. For the near term (say, 5 to 10 years), a responsible human will still be needed to supervise these “intelligent” cars, so you had better be sober. Does this really require artificial morality, when one could simply put a breathalyzer between key and ignition? Such a dumb, inflexible system would have a kind of operational morality in which the engineer has decided that no car should be started by person with a certain blood alcohol level. But it would be ethically blind — incapable, for instance, of recognizing the difference between, on the one hand, a driver who needs the car simply to get home and, on the other hand, a driver who had a couple of drinks with dinner but needs the car because a 4-year old requiring urgent medical attention is in the back seat.

It is within our current capacities to build machines that are able to determine, based on real-time information about current traffic conditions and access to actuarial tables, how likely it is that this situation might lead to an accident. Of course, this only defers the ethical question of how to weigh the potential for harm that either option presents, but a well-designed system of human-machine interaction could allow for a manual override to be temporarily logged in a “black-box” similar to those used on airplanes. In case of an accident this would provide evidence that the person had taken responsibility. Just as we can envisage machines with increasing degrees of autonomy from human oversight, we can envisage machines whose controls involve increasing degrees of sensitivity to things that matter ethically. Not perfect machines, to be sure, but better.

~~~

Does this talk of artificial moral agents overreach, contributing to our own dehumanization, to the reduction of human autonomy, and to lowered barriers to warfare? If so, does it grease the slope to a horrendous, dystopian future? I am sensitive to the worries, but optimistic enough to think that this kind of techno-pessimism has, over the centuries, been oversold. Luddites have always come to seem quaint, except when they were dangerous. The challenge for philosophers and engineers alike is to figure out what should and can reasonably be done in the middle space that contains somewhat autonomous, partly ethically-sensitive machines. Some may think the exploration of this space is too dangerous to allow. Prohibitionists may succeed in some areas — robot arms control, anyone? — but they will not, I believe, be able to contain the spread of increasingly autonomous robots into homes, eldercare, and public spaces, not to mention the virtual spaces in which much software already operates without a human in the loop. We want machines that do chores and errands without our having to monitor them continuously. Retailers and banks depend on software controlling all manner of operations, from credit card purchases to inventory control, freeing humans to do other things that we don’t yet know how to construct machines to do.

Where’s the challenge, a software engineer might ask? Isn’t ethical governance for machines just problem-solving within constraints? If there’s fuzziness about the nature of those constraints, isn’t that a philosophical problem, not an engineering one? Besides, why look to human ethics to provide a gold standard for machines? My response is that if engineers leave it to philosophers to come up with theories that they can implement, they will have a long wait, but if philosophers leave it to engineers to implement something workable they will likely be disappointed by the outcome. The challenge is to reconcile these two rather different ways of approaching the world, to yield better understanding of how interactions among people and contexts enable us, sometimes, to steer a reasonable course through the competing demands of our moral niche. The different kinds of rigor provided by philosophers and engineers are both needed to inform the construction of machines that, when embedded in well-designed systems of human-machine interaction, produce morally reasonable decisions even in situations where Asimov’s laws would produce deadlock.

This essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center.)

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/wQUx2

Health organizations not prepared for HIPAA audits

2011-12-23T05:40:00.001-08:00

A new survey's report comes as federal authorities say they would expand enforcement of patient privacy and security requirements.

In July, the Dept. of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights made clear that it would start doing a better job at making sure entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act were taking the necessary steps to protect patient data and comply with patient privacy and security laws.

What have health care organizations been doing since then to prepare for the tighter enforcement? Not much, according to the results of a survey of more than 400 HIPAA compliance officers and health information management directors.

In November, HCPro, a health care regulation and compliance consultancy firm in Danvers, Mass., conducted a survey to gauge how prepared health care organizations are for a HIPAA audit. In a Dec. 2 blog post on the survey's findings, HCPro said it found that only 17% of those surveyed were fully prepared, and 70% said they were only "somewhat prepared." A full report on the survey's findings is scheduled to be published in January 2012.

These findings come just four months after the HHS Office for Civil Rights, the department tasked with enforcing HIPAA compliance, awarded a $9 million contract to the McLean, Va.-based consulting firm KPMG to create an audit program. It will verify that health care organizations, payers and business associates are prepared to meet strengthened HIPAA requirements that were laid out in the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Part of KPMG's plan is to conduct random, on-site audits of 150 organizations by Dec. 31, 2012.

According to the contract, the site visits would include interviews with organization leaders such as chief information officers, privacy officers, legal counsel, health information management officers and medical records directors; an examination of the organization's physical features and operations, and its consistency in following policy; and observations of compliance with regulatory requirements.

Organization leaders told HCPro in its survey that they were not fully prepared for these audits for several reasons, including a lack of commitment to HIPAA compliance by senior management. One survey respondent, according to HCPro's blog posting, said most organizations say they don't have time to implement HIPAA regulations on a regular basis. "There needs to be an outside agency coming into the hospital and interviewing the employees on a regular basis," the respondent said.

Although the number of entities KPMG plans to audit is small compared with the number of HIPAA-covered entities in the U.S., any organization could be chosen, according to HHS. KPMG was instructed to audit a wide range of covered entities in terms of scope and size, and could include anyone from individual physicians to business associates.

Under the HIPAA Security Compliance Rules, organizations must complete a risk analysis and have policies in place detailing their approach to patient privacy and security and sanctions for those who do not comply. Experts say not only do organizations need to prepare those documents for the possibility of a random audit by KPMG, but the Office of Civil Rights also has the authority to conduct an audit based on complaints made by patients who feel their privacy was violated.

Survey Says, People are Really into their iPads

2011-12-23T05:39:00.005-08:00

According to a recent online survey done by Software Usability Research Laboratory, 83.65 percent of iPad users are satisfied with their tablet, with 62 percent rating user-friendliness as “excellent. No wonder Apple’s newest device has the top-selling tablet in the world for almost two years.

From the participants surveyed, there were more first generation iPad owners than there were iPad 2 owners. Fifty-two percent of participants said they only bring their iPad with them when they are traveling, while 21 percent bring it everywhere they go.

The percentage of users that hoard their precious tablet and those who share with at least one other person is almost split down the middle with 58 percent and 42 percent respectively.

On a daily basis, participants surveyed use the iPad to browse the web first and foremost with email reading close behind. According to this survey, people aren’t taking advantage of what amazing things Apple’s tablet has to offer. Sixty-five to 85 percent of users said they never having created music, edited photos, chatted or taken pictures with their iPad.

Included with this survey were questions relating to participants preference for apps. The most like app was the Safari browser followed by Flipboard and Dropbox. When asked what apps they liked the least, respondents picked the iTunes app.

Users described the stock iTunes application as slow, complex, inferior to the desktop version, and lacking the ability to remove the application from the device.

Based on responses from a study done a year ago by the same company, Apple listens to its customers. In the previous survey, participants mentioned that the least liked feature of the first generation iPad was the lack of camery and multitasking ability. With the iPad 2, a camera was included and all iOS devices are now multitasking capable.

dddd

http://ping.fm/4KOn1

MGMA Calls for New Contingency Plan for HIPAA 5010 Transaction Standards

2011-12-23T05:39:00.003-08:00

The Department of Health and Human Services should “immediately” issue an expanded contingency plan on the transition to the new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Version 5010 electronic transaction standards, since many practices and state Medicaid agencies are not ready for the transition, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) recommended Dec. 19.

According to the latest research from MGMA, many state Medicaid plans are unable to accept Version 5010 claims and “a significant number of practices” have not yet completed the software upgrades and health plan testing needed for the transition.

The new contingency measures should permit health plans to continue accepting HIPAA Version 4010 transactions and resolve Version 5010 claims that lack all the required data. Additionally, this contingency plan should last for a minimum of six months, MGMA said.

Currently, the compliance date for implementation of these standards is Jan. 1, 2012.

“We have been tracking the Version 5010 coordination between physician practices and their key trading partners throughout 2011 and it is clear that a significant number of these stakeholders are not ready to meet the January 1 compliance date,” Susan Turney, president and chief executive officer of MGMA, said in a statement. “Our main concern is that the failure to implement Version 5010 by the compliance date will impact payment to practices for the services they provide.”

“We oppose requiring the submission of a transition plan and timeline as a needless bureaucratic exercise that adds to the workload of the providers who have to produce them and the government employees who have to review them,” she said.

Implementation of Version 5010 is a prerequisite for using the updated International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) Clinical Modification diagnosis and ICD-10-PCS inpatient procedure code set in electronic health care transactions effective Oct. 1, 2013.

On Nov. 14, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that it would not initiate enforcement of the new HIPAA transaction standards until March 31, 2012 (see previous article).

Additional MGMA Findings

According to findings from a survey conducted by MGMA and the American College of Medical Practice Executives (ACMPE), 32 percent of study respondents reported that their organizations' practice management system software has been upgraded to the HIPAA Version 5010 standards and that internal testing was complete.

Nearly 25 percent of those respondents indicated that either their software has not yet been upgraded or that testing is not even scheduled, the release said.

Additionally, less than 18 percent of respondents to the survey said they have completed testing with their Medicaid plans, and 79 percent of study respondents indicated that testing with all major commercial health plans remains incomplete.

Overall, the study found that less than 14 percent of respondents rate their 5010 implementation status as fully complete.

NASA Challenges Students to Train Like Astronauts

2011-12-23T05:39:00.001-08:00

Everybody knows that if you want to be an astronaut, you need to have top-notch math and science skills. But astronauts also need the strength and muscle coordination to navigate a zero-gravity environment, so even the best students can't cut it at NASA unless their bodies are in top shape, too. To help the next generation of students become physically and mentally prepared to be astronauts, NASA is taking a page out of First Lady Michelle Obama's fitness playbook and launching the Train Like an Astronaut project.

The program, which is developed by the same NASA scientists and fitness professionals that work with current astronauts, provides "structured, hands-on science activities" and connects "physical Earth-based needs to the requirements of exploring space." Each mission—"Do a Spacewalk," for example—contains a student-friendly "mission briefing, mission assignment, and mission purpose, plus vocabulary and related NASA facts," as well as information about proper nutrition. The missions and corresponding teachers' guides are downloadable in both English and Spanish, and are aligned with health and physical fitness education standards.

Charles Lloyd, NASA's human research program education and outreach manager, says one of NASA's goals is "to inspire our youth to stay in school and master professions in the sciences and engineering fields" so they can carry on the important work of space exploration. Let's hope Train Like an Astronaut catches on in schools so we can ensure there's a next generation of fit explorers.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/o78M7

This Year?s 10 Best TED Talks To Share With Students

2011-12-20T05:54:00.003-08:00

In honor of the recent TED Live announcement, I thought it’d be a good idea to remind you why TED rocks. Below is just a small fraction of the amazing presentations put on by the folks over at TED. Each one of the presentations embedded below is perfect for sharing with students and showing in class*. Heck, assigning the viewing of these TED talks as homework isn’t a bad idea.

Do you use TED in the classroom? I’d love to hear about it if you did and I know the rest of the Edudemic community would too! Let everyone know about it in the comments.

*There are of course many more presentations but I picked these because I thought they resonated with me and would do the same with students.

Philip Zimbardo: The Demise of Guys?
Philip Zimbardo was the leader of the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment — and an expert witness at Abu Ghraib. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, “Why are boys struggling?” He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons — and challenges the TED community to think about solutions.

Pavan Sukhdev: Put A Value On Nature!
A banker by training, Pavan Sukhdev runs the numbers on greening up — showing that green economies are an effective engine for creating jobs and creating wealth. Every day, we use materials from the earth without thinking, for free. But what if we had to pay for their true value: would it make us more careful about what we use and what we waste? Think of Pavan Sukhdev as nature’s banker — assessing the value of the Earth’s assets.

Annie Murphy Paul: What We Learn Before We’re Born
Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb — from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods. Annie Murphy Paul investigates how life in the womb shapes who we become.

Joe Sabia: The Technology of Storytelling
Joe Sabia investigates new ways to tell stories — meshing viral video and new display technologies with old-fashioned narrative. iPad storyteller Joe Sabia introduces us to Lothar Meggendorfer, who created a bold technology for storytelling: the pop-up book. Sabia shows how new technology has always helped us tell our own stories, from the walls of caves to his own onstage iPad.

Allan Jones: A Map of the Brain
As CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Allan Jones leads an ambitious project to build an open, online, interactive atlas of the human brain. How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region, and how it all connects up.

Yves Rossy: Fly With the Jetman
With a jet-powered wing attached to his body, Yves Rossy expands the possibilities of human flight. Strapped to a jet-powered wing, Yves Rossy is the Jetman — flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works, Rossy takes the TEDGlobal stage to share the experience and thrill of flying.

Ben Kacyra: Ancient Wonders Captured in 3D
Ben Kacyra uses state-of-the-art technology to preserve cultural heritage sites and let us in on their secrets in a way never before possible. Ancient monuments give us clues to astonishing past civilizations — but they’re under threat from pollution, war, neglect. Ben Kacyra, who invented a groundbreaking 3D scanning system, is using his invention to scan and preserve the world’s heritage in archival detail. (Watch to the end for a little demo.)

Jay Bradner: Open-Source Cancer Research
In his lab, Jay Bradner, a researcher at Harvard and Dana Farber in Boston, works on a breakthrough approach for subverting cancer .. and he’s giving the secret away. How does cancer know it’s cancer? At Jay Bradner’s lab, they found a molecule that might hold the answer, JQ1 — and instead of patenting JQ1, they published their findings and mailed samples to 40 other labs to work on. An inspiring look at the open-source future of medical research.

Todd Kuiken: A Prosthetic Arm That “Feels”
A doctor and engineer, Todd Kuiken builds new prosthetics that connect with the human nervous system. Yes: bionics. Physiatrist and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system — improving motion, control and even feeling. Onstage, patient Amanda Kitts helps demonstrate this next-gen robotic arm.

Pamela Meyer: How to Spot a Liar
Pamela Meyer thinks we’re facing a pandemic of deception, but she’s arming people with tools that can help take back the truth. On any given day we’re lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lie can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and “hotspots” used by those trained to recognize deception — and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.

Source: Edudemic

The learning cycle and the power of asynchronous learning activities

2011-12-20T05:54:00.001-08:00

When grappling with the concept of learning I often talk about the importance of reflection. However, another key concept is asynchronicity (I'm not entirely sure that's a word). I've reflected on this previously withinAsynchronous = Time and Space Learning. In that post I talked about how learning is more likely to occur when given time and space. I wanted to tease this out a bit more in relation to learning itself.

Learning is hard, really hard. It's a skill just to recognise when it's happening and cultivate it effectively. Often, the pain associated with it is viewed negatively. But the pain needs to gritted out because this is an important stage of the process. Marilyn Taylor characterised learning as a continuous process of disorientation, exploration, reorientation and equilibrium (see p53 of this). It's a cycle and the desired state is multiple loops through the cycle. For every stage the flexibility, time and space offered by asynchronous learning activities is preferable to a purely synchronous involvement from formal education. Of course, for synchronous learning events you always have the time afterwards to reflect. But if you have a formal learning experience where everything is synchronous, the asynchronous times the learner has alone are not facilitated, not supported and without structured communication or collaboration when they need it the most. You may be thinking "so what" but this is the point of formal education - to structure, facilitate and, in some senses, manufacture the learning. When you structure in asynchronous learning activities through the various guises of learning technology tools and carefully facilitate such activities the stages of Taylor's cycle are given the best chance of being rowed through by the learner. It's easy for learners to capsize in the first time they encourage the disorientation stage and they'll keep doing this every time they encounter it. Pretty soon they shy away from the mental states associated with the learning cycle.

I think this has contributed to the a vast mass of humans who don't really know how to learn properly. They grew up on a diet of synchronous learning and the difficult process of moving through the learning cycle wasn't supported in any way. The tragedy is they carry it through their adult life and have trouble becoming lifelong learners thus inhibiting their potential. I am still honing my learning skills but I keep trying and am able to support the process through various social media tool (like this one). BTW, learning overall is great. The "ah ha" moments are worth the pain. It's a bit like going for a run but that metaphor can wait for another posting.

A couple of asterisks to this post. There is, of course, a lot of literature out there on learning theories and models. For this post, I chose one that describe a process I recognise. Also, the statement: "there are vast mass of humans who don't really know how to learn" is based on anecdotal evidence. I think I have a somewhat informed decision but would welcome insights from others on this.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/Oj2wU

The 80/20 Rule for Learning Transfer

2011-12-20T05:53:00.001-08:00

To ensure learning transfer requires learning leaders to make specific provisions before an event starts.

If 10 CLOs were asked how best to increase the value of learning, almost all would say the same thing: Increase the amount of learning transfer in the workplace. However, if the same CLOs were asked about their own learning transfer success, they likely will express disappointment.

The lack of learning transfer has been a long-standing issue in the learning community, and research on how to increase it is both complex and contradictory. If CLOs followed typical advice, they could add hundreds of components to their learning programs, put an undue burden on learners, managers and training professionals and more than double the investment they make in each skill development effort, not to mention ruin their budgets.

The Rule of Three: Practical and Effective
There is a less costly approach to increase the desired learning transfer. A focused and practical approach has emerged from extensive research conducted during the past several years. This research, 2009’s “Exploring Trends in Human Resource Development: Bridging the Research-Practice Gap” and 2010’s “Learning Transfer: What Organizations Are Doing To Drive Enhancing Learning Effectiveness,” was reported in Industrial and Commercial Training, Human Resource Development Review and other professional and research publications. It shows significant increases in the use of skills resulting from well-designed, efficient learning transfer activities. These activities, when analyzed to determine which had the greatest impact on improved performance, indicate actions organizations can take to increase the application of new learning on the job, deliver business results and improve ROI.

The research identified 11 core activities that create a meaningful increase in learning transfer. These activities meet the 80/20 rule: They represent the 20 percent of learning transfer activities that create 80 percent of the impact. Based on results from a wide variety of organizations, the research showed learning transfer can be increased by as much as 180 percent, with only modest cost increases.

To simplify research results, 11 factors were consolidated into three critical areas where organizations can improve learning transfer. If a learning initiative is designed to address these three elements, its impact can be significantly increased. The three elements are: learner readiness, design for transfer and organizational alignment.

Learner readiness: It would seem obvious that learners need to be prepared to learn if their learning experience is to be effective. Yet few organizations pay enough attention to motivation, enthusiasm and positive anticipation prior to a learning session. Learner readiness is about ensuring that learners see the relevance and payoffs of new skills and are confident they can use their learning on the job. The aforementioned research showed that addressing these elements can increase transfer by as much as 70 percent.

Autodesk, a 3D design, engineering and entertainment software company, provides an example. Its learning organization launched an initiative to increase consulting skills for its sales force. Among other actions, the company implemented a plan to prepare salespeople and technical specialists for learning.

To kick off the initiative, employees received an email with a link to a fast-paced, YouTube-like introduction to the upcoming learning event. The introduction provided an overview of the content, but also delivered a clear message about the potential impact of the new skills on participants’ sales success and the motivation necessary to fully engage in the learning. Following the introduction, participants completed a self-assessment based on their current strengths and greatest opportunities for improvement.

“The pre-work preparation created a foundation for success, letting the learners know that they had something to contribute as well as something to learn,” said Starr Hill-Bennett, Autodesk global program manager of worldwide sales and services training. “The results showed that when learners attended the core skills workshop, they were focused, motivated and ready to take advantage of their learning. Also, the up-front readiness component allowed us to move more quickly into skills and finish with an Autodesk-specific case study focused on application.”

Starting the learning experience before the planned sessions, and doing so in a way that engaged the learner’s interest and participation — specifically, the Autodesk training staff used technology to deliver the preparation activities to each individual’s desk — ensured learners had some “skin in the game” before they took part in the core learning program.

Design for transfer: Too often, learning and development staff members focus exclusively on the learning event and its objectives — the traditional concerns of instructional design. They pay little attention to opportunities to build in a variety of transfer elements such as structured follow-up activities, creation of specific action plans, or opportunities to practice behavioral models. Without these elements, performance outcomes can suffer.

Major Hammell, senior director of sales force effectiveness for Georgia-Pacific, said this shift from the traditional point of view to a focus on the expected business impact of a learning initiative is critical. “In the past we used the instructional design process to focus on what happened in the event — the learning objectives and activities. So, this time we turned it on its head and asked, ‘What will it take to achieve the performance outcomes we want?’”

The result of this design focus was sales training that emphasized not just the event — a workshop — but also actions to support use of the skills in the field. For example, the new sales skills were incorporated into a sales planning form that was implemented in Georgia-Pacific’s CRM system. Learners used the form to select a specific sales opportunity to which they would apply their new skills. Sales teams also practiced skills in a simulation and received feedback.

The workshop was followed by 12 weekly messages pushed out to learners and managers through an automated email system managed by the sales force effectiveness team. Each message included a review of a skill, tips for application and links to games and videos to further enhance interest. Importantly, the design included manager involvement. Sales directors also received materials and Web-based coaching on how to conduct a review “meeting in a box.”

“These activities really serve as immediate and ongoing reinforcement of the learning experience and significantly improve our efforts to enhance sales capability for the long term,” Hammell said.

The Georgia-Pacific experience illustrates the power of focusing design efforts on actual performance outcomes. Building in a variety of relevant activities before the event allows an audience to embrace and use new skills prior to attending the workshop. Continued reinforcement and application activities post-event ensured participants make the new learning part of their everyday job activities.

Organizational alignment: Most executives are busy, so learning leaders often experience challenges gaining executives’ and managers’ involvement. Yet organizational alignment is one of the most critical aspects to increase learning transfer. By securing executive sponsorship, engaging managers and encouraging peer support, the organization can create a learning culture. With such a culture in place, the aforementioned research indicates it is possible to increase learning transfer by more than 90 percent.

Work by the learning organization at Clean Harbors demonstrates how to achieve alignment. The hazardous waste disposal company and provider of environmental, energy and industrial services has been growing rapidly, and it found a need to merge cultures from new acquisitions and create a unified sales force.

To achieve this objective, the Clean Harbors learning organization initiated a project to provide all salespeople with a common set of skills and processes. Sarah Mitchell, vice president of the sales operations, said it was clear from the beginning that organizational alignment was critical to success. As a first step, the project team conducted interviews with executive stakeholders, focusing on critical success factors and identifying potential barriers to success. The results were used to craft a message for the field highlighting the initiative’s strategic importance.

The interviews were the key to gaining executive involvement in kicking off the workshops in person and winning commitment from front-line managers to provide coaching and support. Managers met with their salespeople before the workshop to set learning and performance goals, and many managers chose to participate in the workshop.

After the workshop, managers received weekly coaching tips and resources to support effective coaching. “Manager involvement was critical to our success,” Mitchell said. “Without them we would not have seen the level of improvement in sales that we experienced.”

The Clean Harbors team put forth extra effort up front, but providing the initial support and ongoing coaching and reinforcement needed to deliver real results paid off. The organizational alignment achieved was critical to delivering the expected performance outcomes.

Alcatel-Lucent, a telecommunications technology company, offers a final example. Becoming a single global organization and providing world-class customer service are high priorities for Alcatel-Lucent. Ensuring employees use their global effectiveness skills is a critical part of breaking down barriers.

To meet these needs, the company implemented a global effectiveness skills development program. When the skills development initiative was rolled out, it was enhanced with real-world job application activities, post-session reinforcement messages and practice role-plays to support learning transfer.

The program confirmed the importance of global awareness skills and the value of learning transfer activities. “With global awareness, our employees are more effective in cross-cultural business relationships, and the learning transfer activities helped employees use the skills more extensively,” said Parinaz Sekechi, a learning consultant for Alcatel-Lucent University.

Learning Transfer — So Worth It
Virtually every learning leader seeks to demonstrate the value of learning initiatives. Where number of participants was once seen as a measure of success, today there is greater demand to show solid ROI and business impact. Investing in learning transfer yields big returns.

The CLO should require that any major learning initiative include plans for learning transfer activities focusing on the three major areas: learner readiness, design for transfer and organizational alignment. The examples presented here did require additional time and effort, but the use of technology and successful recruitment of managers as coaches greatly reduces the time commitment by staff, while increasing the likelihood of success.

While long-term, large-scale strategic initiatives have a place, they often become so time-consuming and burdensome they never reach fruition. The cases discussed here offer examples of how organizations increased learning transfer on the job on a program-by-program basis. The outcomes these companies experienced show that a less-is-more approach can help zero in on actions that are quick, specific and easy to execute. By focusing on the 20 percent of actions that produce 80 percent of the returns, learning organizations can sustain a high level of effectiveness and business impact with every initiative they undertake.

Michael Leimbach is vice president of global research and design for Wilson Learning Worldwide, and Ed Emde is president for Wilson Learning Corp. They can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/AG0OK

5 tips for 11th hour HIPAA 5010 compliance

2011-12-12T01:56:00.007-08:00

Like sand through an hourglass, time is trickling down to the HIPAA 5010 deadline. CMS recently granted the industry a grace period for transitioning to HIPAA 5010, but those grains of sand are dwindling ever faster, and there’s no time to lose for payers and providers still working toward compliance.

Even with the “enforcement-free” period, payers and providers who miss the original January 1, 2012 deadline aren’t off the hook. CMS plans to continue holding them responsible and will require them to provide evidence of their good-faith efforts to meet the federal mandate during the 90-day window.

This isn’t our first time running up against a HIPAA deadline. During the transition to HIPAA 4010, we saw many organizations develop contingency plans to operate beyond the deadline without achieving compliance. Unfortunately, many are still operating from contingency plans more than six years later. No deadlines were enforced back then, and as we approach the HIPAA 5010 deadline, CMS is working to counter the same attitude — as well as the same problem.

The big picture here is that HIPAA is crucial to administrative simplification, and continuing to accept long-running contingency plans as the status quo defeats the whole purpose and eliminates the value. The 90-day grace period for HIPAA 5010 shouldn’t be viewed as the latest example of an “always-provide-a-contingency-plan” mindset. Rather, with this extension, CMS has signaled it is in tune with the industry (more so now than with HIPAA 4010) and understands its current state of readiness to comply. As such, all of us should understand that CMS expects full HIPAA 5010 compliance by March 2012.

All of this implies that there’s a lot to accomplish in a short period of time for many payers and providers. Given the unimpressive number of HIPAA 5010 submitters, the meager volume of transactions currently taking place, and other testing data that reflects the industry's underwhelming efforts to date, it will be an uphill climb for some organizations. Many are still waiting on software upgrades — stuck in limbo and unable to progress toward the finish line. Whatever the holdup, compliance will require full cooperation between trading partners. Both internally and externally, it’s now an all-hands-on-deck effort to accomplish this task on time.

The following tips should help your organization make the most of the time that’s left:

1. Expand Your Use of Automation
Organizations that haven’t started internal testing should consider how best to automate both internal and external testing processes. By doing so, they will ensure consistent coverage across both types of testing and complete them in a shorter time span. Keep in mind, not every scenario can be tested, even with automation. Given time constraints, it’s vitally important to triage scenarios and prioritize those that will cause the greatest pain if not done correctly in production.

2. Conduct Concurrent Internal and External Testing
In an ideal world, it would be nice to complete internal testing prior to going outside the organization, but given time constraints, it’s no longer practical. Payers and providers should work together to allow internal and external testing to happen at the same time. The key to success is ongoing communication among teams during concurrent testing. Organizations will need to understand the root cause of each failure and identify whether the point of failure was due to internal or external issues.

3. Prioritize External Testing Based on Complexity
External testing is critical, but it can also be labor-intensive if you haven’t laid the right groundwork with internal testing. If you don’t have the luxury of completing internal testing before starting testing with trading partners, it’s a good idea to start with those who have simpler edits and easier issue resolution processes. That way, you can level-load your resources. While you’re still ironing out internal kinks, you can conduct external testing without overburdening your staff. If possible, wait to begin testing more complex trading partner relationships only once the majority of internal testing is complete. As time goes on, testing should become more of a “lather, rinse, repeat” model, rather than time-consuming efforts to troubleshoot and research appropriate issue resolution.

4. Establish a Business Readiness Plan and Triage Team
Very few healthcare organizations have unlimited time and resources available for HIPAA 5010 testing. Given those constraints, it’s reasonable to assume some issues will crop up in production, and organizations need to be prepared to handle them. Payers and providers should dedicate resources to handle these issues and have resolution processes in place prior to going live with 5010. The pain of mapping out the process after a problem rears its ugly head is immense, so take the time to figure it out beforehand. Part of the plan should also include a vendor warranty and support for a set period, so production problems aren’t treated with fast fixes that won’t resolve the underlying issue. Otherwise, the problems never go away, and they always cause more ongoing work for office staff.

5. Start Testing – Even if Things Aren’t Perfect
Testing is often an iterative process. That means even getting started in one area can yield benefits. For example, if a provider is still waiting for its practice management vendor to update their software, it could work with trading partners to get test response files; e.g., 835, 276, or 271. The team can evaluate the changes manually to identify issues and address them with the trading partner ahead of time. Time is of the essence here — and there is none to lose. Any testing that can be done now, should be done now, even if scenarios are not perfect and complete.

As the clock ticks closer to the 11th hour, it’s critical that the industry make a concentrated, collective effort toward successful HIPAA 5010 testing and transition. Even with a 90-day grace period, the entire industry — CMS, providers and payers — needs to collectively acknowledge that by dragging this process out any longer, we will continue to plod along in ruts of our own making. And we’ll continue to suffer from increasingly unbearable administrative burdens, making the concept of regulatory migration worthless.
HIPAA upgrades will not end with 5010. It’s in the best interests of both payers and providers to get all hands on deck and seize what’s left of the HIPAA 5010 transition timeline. After all, the transition to 6020 is just around the corner!

http://ping.fm/1DDDM

6 Apps for Creating Outlines on the iPad:

2011-12-12T01:56:00.005-08:00

Capturing information quickly and efficiently in a classroom is an important skill. So much of what we do in the classroom needs to be documented either by you, the teacher or by the students. Apps that make this process quick and easy are therefore vital. Here are a quick list that might work in your classroom - some are quite expensive but they do offer a vastly different product depending on who will be the primary user.

Notability: $0.99

Notability 4.0 is the first truly integrated note-taking app for iPad. Standing on a framework that automatically links notes with audio recordings, Notability supports all of your note-taking needs -- handwriting, PDF annotation, word processing, and more work together seamlessly allowing you to create comprehensive, beautiful notes, quickly and simply. Auto Sync ensures your notes are backed up safely.

http://ping.fm/khWK6

OminOutliner for iPad: $20.99 AU

OmniOutliner starts as a blank page. But as you collect, compose, and rearrange text, its powerful outlining features emerge to organize your ideas. Hierarchy, columns, styling, notes — use them all in concert or keep things simple, depending on the project at hand. From basic lists and tables to serious writing and data wrangling, OmniOutliner understands how to keep your work structured and tidy.

http://ping.fm/kGakK

iOutline for iPad: $0.99 AU

An outline editor is an essential tool. Point lists and numbered lists, which predate computers, are themselves essential tools. Being able to keep these lists on an iPad makes them cleaner, more useful, and easier to modify. iOutline is an outline editor for the iPad, in which you can build lists of single-line items. You can add sub-items and items at the same level of indentation.

http://ping.fm/lgwFT

Outliner for iPad: $5.49 AU

CarbonFin Outliner for iPad allows you to organize your thoughts, tasks, and projects. Easily create a todo list for today, or track an entire project anywhere you are. Share your outlines, edit them online, and collaborate with other Outliner users. Create outlines for structured notes, lists, tasks, tasks with subtasks, projects or search through all your outlines, or find text in the current outline.

http://ping.fm/bQx4D

Simple Outliner: FREE

Simple Outliner is an outline processor which can be operated easily. To pop up the menu, tap the bottom of the main screen. Edit an item by double tapping it. To show a note wipe the item left or delete or copy an item by wiping it right. To change an item into folder, double tap the dot at the left of it. To change the outline level of an item, shift it horizontally.

http://ping.fm/1N9vd

Circus Ponies Notebook: $31.99 AU

Ever wonder why note taking apps don't let you bold, underline, color text, or use multiple fonts? The answer is because it's HARD. Problem is, bold and other text styling are super important when taking notes. Sometimes you need to scribble, sometimes you want to add a diagram. It's a rare app that allows all three. Add to this the ability to sync your notes between your iPad and Mac via Dropbox.

http://ping.fm/3x1Zw

10 Things Chemical Plant Operators Need to Know About OSHA's New Chem NEP

2011-12-12T01:56:00.003-08:00

On Nov. 30, OSHA announced the launch of its PSM National Emphasis Program for chemical facilities (Chem NEP). The new Chem NEP expands nationwide a previous 2009 Pilot Chemical Facilities Process Safety Management NEP, which had covered only a few OSHA regions, and established policies and procedures for inspecting workplaces covered by the PSM Standard.

The inspection process under the new Chem NEP includes detailed questions designed to gather facts related to PSM requirements and verification that employers' written PSM programs are adequately implemented in the field. The intent of the NEP is to conduct focused inspections at facilities randomly selected from a list of worksites likely to have covered processes. The director of OSHA, Dr. David Michaels, announced at the launch of this new NEP that during "the pilot Chemical NEP, [OSHA Compliance] found many of the same safety-related problems that were uncovered during our NEP for the refinery industry … As a result, [OSHA is] expanding the enforcement program to a national level to increase awareness of these dangers so that employers will more effectively prevent the release of highly hazardous chemicals."
Below are the 10 most important things chemical plant operators need to know about the new nationwide Chem NEP:

1. It is effective immediately and has no expiration.
Programmed inspections will begin immediately in all regions. Unlike the Refinery PSM NEP and the Pilot Chem NEP, this directive does not include an expiration date.

2. It expands the Chem NEP nationwide.
Whereas the pilot NEP involved only a few select regions under federal OSHA’s jurisdiction, the new nationwide Chem NEP applies to all OSHA regions. And unlike the pilot chem and refinery NEPs, states are required to participate in this emphasis program. If the approved state OSHA plan already has some version of a Chem NEP or wants to implement its own version (within 60 days), the state plan must demonstrate to federal OSHA that its program is at least as effective. Otherwise, the states must adopt this directive.

3. Targets for Chem NEP inspections include:
The types of workplaces inspected under the new Chem NEP are similar to the pilot. OSHA will assemble a master list for each region based on employers who: (1) submitted Program 3 Risk Management Plans to EPA; (2) have a NAICS code for Explosives Manufacturing; (3) appear in OSHA’s enforcement database as having been cited in the past for PSM-related issues; and (4) are known to the area office as operating a PSM-covered process. Any workplaces selected for inspection under OSHA’s Site-Specific Targeting Plan, which also happen to operate a PSM-covered process, will be inspected under the Chem NEP directive. Likewise, inspections arising from an employee complaint, referral or incident involving a PSM issue also will be conducted under the Chem NEP directive. Complaints, referrals and incidents unrelated to PSM may still result in an inspection under this directive at the area director’s discretion.

VPP- or SHARP-approved facilities are partially exempt. (They are exempt from programmed inspections, but may be subject to inspection under the Chem NEP upon an employee complaint, incident or referral related to PSM.)

4. The selection of unit(s) includes:
OSHA will attempt to identify “the most hazardous process” as the selected unit(s) for inspection under the Chem NEP. The selection of the unit(s) will be based on the following:
· Quantity of chemicals in the process;
· Age of the process unit;
· Number of workers and/or contractors present;
· Incident and near-miss reports and other history;
· Input from the union or operators;
· Ongoing maintenance activities; and
· 119(o) Compliance Audit findings.

5. Inspection scheduling expectations include:
Every OSHA area office across the country is expected to complete 3-5 programmed Chem NEP inspections per year. The sites selected for inspections will consist of approximately 25 percent workplaces that use ammonia refrigeration and 75 percent all other workplaces with a PSM coverage process.

6. It emphasizes implementation over documentation.
Like the pilot NEP, compliance officers will be focused on implementation of PSM elements in the field rather than relying solely on the quality of the written PSM program.

7. It features dynamic list questions.
Like the pilot NEP, the dynamic list-based evaluation under the Chem NEP is a mandatory gap analysis formatted in a series of questions to facilitate evaluation of compliance with various elements of the PSM standard. The list of questions rotates periodically and will not be publicly disclosed. The questions are accompanied by guidance for CSHOs as to what documents to request, interview topics and questions to cover, and potential citations to issue. Each dynamic list includes 10-15 primary and 5 secondary questions. Questions are designed to elicit a “Yes,” “No” or “N/A” determination of PSM compliance, and any “No” will normally result in a citation.

8. The following documents and presentations will be requested:
During a Chem NEP inspection, employers will be asked to produce the following documents:
· List of PSM-covered processes;
· List of units and maximum intended inventories;
· Three years of OSHA 300 logs for employer and contractors, and contract employee injury logs;
· Summary description of PSM program;
· PFDs, P&IDs, Plot Plans and electrical classification drawings for the selected unit(s);
· Description of process and safety systems, safe upper and lower operating limits and design codes and standards for the selected unit(s);
· The initial PHA and the most recent Redo or Revalidation for the selected unit(s) (including PHA reports and worksheets, recommendations and action items and schedule for addressing and completing recommendations and action items); and
· PSM incident reports for the selected unit(s).

Before a walkaround inspection, OSHA will request the following presentations:
· Overview of the company’s PSM Program and how it is implemented;
· Identify personnel responsible for implementing each PSM element;
· Description of records used to verify compliance; and
· Process description for the selected unit(s).

9. A single issue will yield multiple citation items.
As we reported about the refinery NEP, OSHA was turning a single issue into multiple violations. The agency has memorialized this practice in the Chem NEP directive. The directive advises CSHOs that a single valve change, for example, could implement 11 different PSM elements, and each should be considered for individual citation items.

10. Abatement verification and documentation is now mandatory.
Under the pilot NEP, some citations required employers to simply certify that abatement had been completed. Under the new Chem NEP, however, abatement verification and documentation is now mandatory. The NEP also directs CSHOs to review past PSM-related citations issued to the same employer going back 6 years, and identify potential failures to abate and possibly repeat and willful violations.

http://ping.fm/9E5W3

Dealing with Doctors' Reluctance Toward PHR

2011-12-12T01:56:00.001-08:00

Physician engagement with patients through personal health records may be more of a challenge than getting patients to use the system, says G. Daniel Martich, MD, FACP, chief medical information officer and vice president for physician services at UPMC.

Because of the particular software design of the e-visit portion of the PHR at UPMC, it can be used only by generalists such as primary care internists and family care practitioners. Of the 69 UPMC practices and 350 physicians in that category, 27 of the practices have opted in completely. Individual physicians also can opt in, and in the other 42 practices at least one doctor has agreed to respond to participate in HealthTrak and respond to the e-visit portion of the PHR.

Not bad, Martich says, but it could be better.

Among physicians who are reluctant to participate in UPMC’s PHR system, Martich says the most common reason was that they feared the direct connection to the patient would be a time burden.

“They worried that the patient would write tomes, as opposed to a quick phone conversation. They thought it would be so onerous, looking at attachments of articles the patient clipped from Reader’s Digest and they’d never get through their day,” he says. “That, by and large, is myth. In fact, we’re finding that patients are much more succinct if they have to type it in rather than talking to you on the phone.”

Holly Miller, MD, MBA, FHIMSS, chief medical officer with Fishkill, NY–based Med-Allies and a HIMSS director, seconds that conclusion. She participated in a time study at the Cleveland Clinic that showed physicians actually saved time by allowing lab results to be released to the PHR rather than calling the patient.

Physicians also can be protective of patient data, with good intentions, Martich says. They don’t like the idea of lab results, for instance, being shared directly with the patient without the doctor being able to explain what they mean. The results in the PHR must be accompanied by an explanation of what the results mean, possibly with a link to a more detailed discussion, Miller says.

“They’re worried that the patient is going to get horrific news without the doctor first being able to review it, refine it, and present it in the best way,” Martich says. “That concern is understandable, but it really has not been a problem.”

Reliability of the information in the PHR is key, Miller says. Early experiences with PHR models have shown that physicians will not trust any model that depends on the patient entering data. It is far too easy to enter incorrect or incomplete data, she says, and that is why the tethered model is the key to success with a PHR. Physician adoption also depends on the PHR being integrated in such a way that it is automatically generated through the EMR, she says.

“It is unrealistic to expect a provider to go outside of their work flow and log in to a disparate system,” Miller says.

—Greg Freeman

Lessons learned from ICD-9 implementation

2011-12-05T03:21:00.001-08:00

When healthcare transitioned to ICD-9 on Oct. 1, 1984, there was still great confusion 18 months later on how to submit the codes. There was great deal of frustration both on the provider side as well as the health plan side. There was also a huge lack of training to prepare the doctors for the transition to ICD-9. As a result, for almost a year, there were large drops in revenue.

I am seeing things now, for ICD-10, that I witnessed back then for ICD-9. A great deal of people have not even started their processes. I think the last figures I saw showed less than a third of the medical population has begun processes to implement ICD-10, which includes the 5010 Readiness Evaluation, the training processes, understanding their vendors’ readiness, etc.

I had a conversation with a client from a health system with 27 hospitals and about 10,000 doctors. He said that the most frustrating part of the transition to ICD-10 for him are the responses from their vendor community. As you can imagine, there are a tremendous number of systems within a large integrated delivery system that touch ICD-10.

Their primary vendors seem to be prepared. But a lot of the secondary vendors - in the lab area, the radiology area, a lot of the ancillary systems - still are not advertising or articulating where they are in the process. Until these vendors respond, these systems are going to have to be more of a retrospective coding function versus prospective coding. Some of these systems won't be able to assign a code, because they don’t know how they are going to operate as it relates to the total process. So that’s a very frustrating factor for a lot of CIOs.

I used this particular client as a bellwether, because they were one of the first to adopt ICD-9 back in the 1980s, and they did it very well. It makes me think we are going to have the similar problems now with ICD-10.

The other issue that has not been dealt with is the training issue. What is it going to take to train healthcare providers for this new complex system? That’s going to be a tremendous undertaking. One of the things that people can do if they have a claims editing tool in place within their organization (on the inpatient side and the ambulatory side), is run their claims through in a profile mode (e.g., don’t stop the claims if there is an error) to be able to see where the coding errors are, and use the opportunities to train providers.

Overall, the lack of preparation is similar to what it was in Y2K as well as ICD-9. We are going to see some reimbursement reduction as this transitions, as we did in ICD-9. What the extent will be, I don’t know, but I am going to assume it's going to hit some pocketbooks very hard.

The number one priority of course is to finish the 5010 evaluation. It’s a requirement, and critically important. Then, you must assess your ICD-10 processes – it is the most important piece. It is not a lengthy process, but it is one where money invested is going to pay dividends. Also, be prepared for the unexpected. As with any transition to a new system that affects reimbursement, I think healthcare organizations need to be financially ready for a hit to the revenue cycle initially, and have a lot of backup plans. They should anticipate the reimbursement lag during the transition, and have enough reserves ready to make it whole. Within that is testing, testing, and testing - you can't do enough testing in this process.

OSHA Updates Tire Servicing Materials Charts

2011-12-03T04:52:00.003-08:00

The revised materials address OSHA's Materials Handling and Storage standard that protects workers who service single-piece and multi-piece rim wheels.

OSHA Compliance has revised its tire servicing materials to address current hazards in the industry and help workers safely perform maintenance on large vehicle tires.

The revised materials address OSHA's Materials Handling and Storage standard that protects workers who service single-piece and multi-piece rim wheels. Following recent talks with representatives from tire, rubber, and wheel manufacturers, OSHA determined a need for new materials with updates from sources such as the Tire Industry Association.

The updated information, available in a portable manual or as three poster-sized charts, is designed to be easier to access and use. OSHA's revised "Multi-piece Rim Matching Chart" provides an updated list of current and obsolete components, and the old "Demounting and Mounting Procedures for Truck/Bus Tires" chart is now expanded into two charts that deal individually with tubeless and tube-type tires.

"These updated materials will provide readily accessible information on how to prevent worker injuries and deaths from tire-servicing incidents," said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. "The new format and easy access will simplify compliance with the standard by helping employers provide their workers with vital servicing information."

The revised tire charts are available for download on OSHA's Publications page.

Warrant in Hand, OSHA Cites Pet Food Manufacturer for Failing to Protect Workers from Dust and Noise Hazards

2011-12-03T04:52:00.001-08:00

For those employers who've thought about denying OSHA entry at the door of their facility…don't do it. OSHA cited All-Feed Processing & Packaging's facility in Galva, Ill., for 23 health and safety violations with fines exceeding $750,000.

All-Feed Processing & Packaging was cited for alleged willful violations of OSHA’s air contaminant, respiratory protection and hearing conservation standards. Some violations were cited under OSHA's "general duty" clause, including failing to provide appropriate fire and explosion protection in locations where concentrations of combustible dust existed. Proposed fines total $758,450.

"Even after a powerful dust explosion and fire at this facility in 2009, along with a number of citations previously issued for similar conditions, All-Feed Processing & Packaging fails to comply with safety and health requirements," said OSHA Assistant Secretary Dr. David Michaels. "By showing a blatant disregard for worker safety and health, this employer continues to expose workers to deadly hazards."

OSHA issued nine per-instance willful citations for allegedly failing to mandate the use of respirators for six workers exposed to dust in excess of the permissible exposure limits; and failing to protect three dust collection units, which collect combustible dust such as starch, potato base, cellulose fiber and pea protein, from fire and explosion hazards.

The agency also issued four, single-instance willful citations for allegedly requiring employees to work in areas where they were exposed to total dust in excess of permissible limits, together with failing to implement adequate engineering controls when employees were so exposed; failing to administer a continuing and effective hearing conservation program for employees exposed to excessive noise; failing to ensure the safe use, wiring and installation of equipment in hazardous locations; and allowing the use of liquid propane-powered industrial trucks in atmospheres where combustible dust may be ignited. A willful violation is one committed with intentional knowing or voluntary disregard for the law's requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health. Proposed fines for the 13 willful violations total $700,700.

Three repeat safety violations were cited for allegedly failing to ensure that operators of powered industrial trucks had completed training and were evaluated on their skills, have the load rating affixed to lifting devices and post danger signs to warn exposed employees of potential dangers posed by work spaces involving hazardous conditions. One repeat health violation was cited for allegedly failing to post safety instruction signs indicating the presence of combustible dust. A repeat violation exists when an employer previously has been cited for the same or a similar violation of a standard, regulation, rule or order at any other facility in federal enforcement states within the last 5 years. The company was cited for similar hazards in 2009. Proposed fines for the four repeat violations total $50,050.

One serious safety violation, with a proposed fine of $3,850, was cited for allegedly failing to have a written certification indicating that all hazards in the permit-required confined space had been eliminated. A serious violation occurs when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazardous condition about which the employer knew or should have known.

All-Feed Processing & Packaging also was cited for five other-than-serious violations, with proposed fines of $3,850, for allegedly failing to record work-related injuries and illness as required on the OSHA 300 log. An other-than-serious violation is one that has a direct relationship to job safety and health, but probably would not cause death or serious physical harm.

The company was placed in OSHA's Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which focuses enforcement resources on employers with a history of safety violations that endanger workers by demonstrating indifference to their responsibilities under the law. The program includes mandatory OSHA follow-up inspections, and inspections of other work sites of the same employer where similar hazards and deficiencies may be present. All-Feed Processing & Packaging was placed in the program due to its previous violations as well as the per-instance violations cited during both the current and a January 2011 inspection.

"Employers have a responsibility to provide appropriate safety equipment and training to protect workers from respiratory hazards, and to ensure that workplaces are safe and healthful," said Michaels.

All-Feed Processing & Packaging has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA's area director or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

osha compliance software

OSHA NEP Strives to Protect Workers from Chemical Releases

2011-12-03T04:51:00.005-08:00

According to OSHA Administrator Dr. David Michaels, "Far too many workers are injured and killed in preventable incidents at chemical facilities around the country." OSHA set out to address this concern by announcing a National Emphasis Program (NEP) on Nov. 30 to protect workers at these facilities from releases of highly hazardous chemicals.

"This program will enable OSHA inspectors to cover chemical facilities nationwide to ensure that all required measures are taken to protect workers," Michaels said.

The new NEP, which replaces OSHA's 2009 pilot Chemical Facility National Emphasis Program, establishes policies and procedures for inspecting workplaces that are covered by the agency’s process safety management (PSM) standard.

The NEP's inspection process includes detailed questions designed to gather facts related to PSM requirements and verification that employers’ written and implemented PSM programs are consistent. The intent of the NEP is to conduct focused inspections at facilities randomly selected from a list of worksites likely to have highly hazardous chemicals in quantities covered by the standard.

In July 2009, OSHA Compliance Training implemented a multi-year pilot NEP for PSM-covered facilities in an effort to reduce releases of highly hazardous chemicals. According to Michaels, this pilot NEP uncovered many of the same safety-related problems in the chemical industry as found in the refinery industry. OSHA therefore decided to expand the enforcement program to a national level. In this way, the agency can "increase awareness of these dangers so that employers will more effectively prevent the release of highly hazardous chemicals," Michaels explained.

The new NEP can be downloaded as a PDF at http://ping.fm/SR5AD. For additional information, see OSHA’s Safety and Health Topics Web page on Process Safety Management.

OSHA Pounds Meat Manufacturer for Exposing Workers to Fall Hazards

2011-12-03T04:51:00.003-08:00

Sigma Processed Meats Inc. has been cited for 16 serious and three repeat violations worth $204,800 in proposed penalties.

OSHA Training has cited Sigma Processed Meats Inc. for 16 serious and three repeat violations following an inspection that found workers were exposed to fall and other hazards at the company's processing plant in Seminole, Okla. Proposed penalties total $204,800.

OSHA's Oklahoma City Area Office began its investigation June 1 at the company's plant after receiving a complaint. Serious violations include failing to provide guardrails as fall protection for employees working on elevated walking/working surfaces, provide an adequate emergency action plan, provide personal protective equipment such as goggles or face shields, train employees on the use of hazardous chemicals, and address hazards created by deficiencies in the company's process safety management system for anhydrous ammonia. Anhydrous ammonia is used for the refrigeration system.

The repeat violations include failing to develop and implement a lockout/tagout program for isolation of energy sources as well as to provide training for employees on the use of lockout/tagout devices.

"Failure to effectively implement OSHA's safety and health regulations to protect workers from potential hazards could lead to serious injury or death. OSHA will not tolerate such negligence," said David Bates, OSHA's area director in Oklahoma City.

Sigma Processed Meats employs about 160 workers at the Seminole plant, which produces cold cut meats, cheese, creams, and frozen foods.

21st Century Skills are so last century!

2011-12-03T04:51:00.001-08:00

The new mantra, the next big thing, among educators who need a serious sounding phrase to rattle around in reports is ‘21^st Century Skills’. I hear it often, almost always in some overlong, text-heavy, Powerpoint presentation at an educational conference, where collaboration, creativity and communication skills are in short supply. Thank god for wifi!

But does this idee fixe bear scrutiny? In a nice piece of work by Stepahnie Otttenheijm, she asked (radical eh?) some youngsters what 21^st C skills they thought they’d need. Not one of the usual suspects came up. They were less vague, much bolder and far more realistic. Rather than these usual suspects and abstract nouns, they wanted to know how to create and maintain a strong digital identity, be nice, recognise what’s learnt outside school, learn how to search use my Facebook privacy settings. My suspicion is that they know far more about this than we adults.

Collaboration & sharing

Young people communicate and collaborate every few minutes – it’s an obsession. They text, MSN, BBM, Myspace, Facebook, Facebook message, Facebook chat and Skype. Note the absence of email and Twitter. Then there’s Spotify, Soundcloud, Flickr, YouTube and Bitorrent to share, tag, upload and download experiences, comments, photographs, video and media. They also collaborate closely in parties when playing games. Never have the young shared so much, so often in so many different ways. Then along comes someone who wants to teach them this so called 21^st C skill, usually in a classroom, where all of this is banned. I’m always amused at this conceit, that we adults, especially in education, think we even have the skills we claim we want to teach. There is no area of human endeavour that is less collaborative than education. Teaching and lecturing are largely lone wolf activities in classrooms. Schools, colleges and Universities share little. Educational professionals are deeply suspicious of anything produced outside of their classroom or their institution. The culture of NIH (Not Invented Here) is endemic.

Communication

Again, we live in the age of abundant communication. There’s been a renaissance in writing among young people, who have become masters at smart, concise dialogue. The mobile has taken communication to new levels of sophistication. They know what channel to use, in terms of whether it’s archived or not, synchronous or asynchronous. Texts and Facebook comments are archived, some messages are not (voice and; BBM). You call people, synchronously, when you want them to make a decision. Text is asynchronous, therefore slower, more relaxed. They can also handle multiple, open channels at the same time. What do we educators have to offer on this front? Whiteboards? Some groupwork round a table? Not one single teacher in the school my sons attend has an email address available for parents. I’ve just attended two major European conference where only a handful of the participants used Twitter. What do we know - really?

Problem solving

Problem solving is a complex skill and there are serious techniques that you can learn to problem solve such as breakdown, root-cause analysis etc. I’m not at all convinced that many subject-focussed teachers and lecturers know what these generic techniques are. Problem solving for a maths teacher may be factoring equations of finding a proof but they’re the last people I’d call on to solve anything else in life. Do teachers actually know what generic problem solving is or is it seen as some skill that is acquired through osmosis when a group of kids get together to make a movie?

Creativity

Beware of big, abstract nouns. This one has become a cipher for almost everything and nothing. I have no problem with art and drama departments talking about creativity but why does creativity have to be injected into all education. Creative people tend to struggle somewhat at school where academic subjects and exams brand them as failures. When it comes to creativity, my own view is that the music, drama and other creative skills my own offspring have gained, have mostly been acquired outside of school.

Critical thinking

I have some sympathy with this one, as critical thinking is sometimes well taught in good schools and universities, but it needs high quality teaching and the whole curriculum and system of assessment needs to adjust to this need. However, as Arun has shown, there is evidence that in our Universities, this is not happening. Arun (2011), in a study they tracked a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 students who entered 24 four-year colleges, showed that Universities were failing badly on the three skills they studied; critical thinking, complex reasoning and communications. This research, along with similar evidence, is laid out in their book Academically Adrift.

Digital literacy

Across the Arab world young people have collaborated on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to bring down entire regimes. Not one of them has been on a digital literacy course. And, in any case, who are these older teachers who know enough about digital literacy to teach these young people? And how do they teach it – through collaborative, communication on media using social media – NO. By and large this stuff is shunned in schools. We learn digital literacy by doing, largely outside of academe. To be frank, it’s not something they know much about.

Conclusion

Beneath all this, is there just a rather old, top-down, command and control idea – that we know what’s best for them? Isn’t it just the old master-pupil model dressed up in new clothes? In this case, I suspect they know better. There’s a brazen conceit here, that educators know with certainty that these are the chosen skills for the next 100 years. Are we simply fetishising the skills of the current management class? Was there a sudden break between these skills in the last compared to this century? No. What’s changed is the need to understand the wider range of possible communication channels. This comes through mass adoption and practice, not formal school and university. It is an illusion that these skills were ever, or even can be, taught at school. Teachers have enough on their plate without being given this burden. I’ve seen no evidence that teachers have the disposition, or training, to teach these skills. In fact, in universities, I’d argue that smart, highly analytic, research-driven academics tend, in my experience, often to have low skills in these areas. , formal environment is not the answer. Pushing rounded, sophisticated, informal skills into a square, subject-defined environment is not the answer. Surely it’s our schools and universities, not young people, who need to be dragged into the 21^st century.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/LT8mr

Ways To Make Money From Your Job Through Learning

2011-12-01T04:58:00.001-08:00

Evert business has to struggle hard to extract the best performance out of employees. While some companies use the mix of various managerial tools, there are others who believe in the process of earning from learning. As a matter of fact, learning is one of the simplest ways to improve the performance of human resource of an organization. For those organizations, which seek to find cost effective ways of imparting learning process, e-Learning is the best tool at hand.

However, learning is sometimes frustrating and uninteresting. But when learning is inherent in a job, the task of the management becomes easier. There are various things that one must incorporate in order to accelerate the process of learning. Firstly, if employees know that have to learn, things will get pretty difficult for the management because employees have a tendency to repel new changes. As such, learning should be inherent in the business, so that the employees know that they are gaining something out of the process.

E-learning is straightforward and uncomplicated. Organizations that have incorporated e-learning in daily routine have witnessed improved performance overall at all levels. Management might have several issues with a new system, just like the employees, but the top management needs to find the return on investment. Needless to mention, just like employees, management, too has to involve a lot of efforts and time, which often can be of real worry.

There are many companies in the world, which have been hugely benefitted from the earning from learning process. On the onset, it can be said that the process works largely for employees. However, there are many companies, which use the technique for improving their output. It is like a source of motivation for the employees, unlike monetary motivation, that seeks to bring the best from them without giving extra pressure on the job.

Earning is the prime concern for both employees and the organization, but doing the same job constantly for years reduces the pleasure of doing it. When the effectiveness of the mind improves, there is an increased desire to do things better and faster, which in turn can be of immense benefit to the business itself. Instead of hiring new staff and training them for new jobs, improving the abilities of present staff is a much better concept because the management can control them better. Learning and earning are essential components of every business that wishes to grow and develop on a constant basis.

About emPower

emPower is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

For additional information, please visit http://ping.fm/cBWNh

Growth in eLearning within UM System causes change, raises concerns

2011-11-29T03:18:00.005-08:00


Graduate teaching assistant Sarah Zurhellen talks with Kelly Bohan after her class, Introduction to American Literature, on Nov. 17 at Middlebush Hall. Zurhellen has been teaching the class for four years. ¦ Pinar Istek

In her ideal class, Sarah Zurhellen would have the students in her American literature course meet in person just once a week. Everything else would be done online.

This can't be a reality because of the current structure of MU, Zurhellen said. Still, the doctoral student comes as close as she can; her students often have time out of the classroom to research or write and, meanwhile, do the rest of their coursework and discussion online.

Related Media

MU has greatly increased the breadth and variety of its online education

offerings over the past few years. However, the number of courses offered

varies significantly by school.

"I think that there is value always to having the conversation, but there’s also value to having a week off from class to work on writing," said Zurhellen, who plans a career in college teaching. "I mean, that’s a different form of articulating your ideas, and it’s more complex than classroom discussion."

Her students are required to share their writing online through a class Wiki, a website that allows multiple users to contribute content. There, students can see and comment on each others' work. To safeguard student privacy, they use pseudonyms for all online work. To follow up, students often meet in small groups to discuss their writing.

Integrating digital technology into the learning process is increasingly common. More than 75 percent of MU courses are on Blackboard. Last year, the number of hours students watched recordings on Tegrity, a program some professors use to capture their lectures, doubled.

In the past five years, the number of MU students enrolling in distance online courses has almost doubled. The number of fully online offerings has gone from about 300 to more than 550 courses. Ten years ago, MU had 11 online degrees or certificates. Today, there are more than 50.

As online courses and degree offerings increase, the traditional roles of student and teacher are changing. They continue to change as administrators and faculty support the proliferation of eLearning across the University of Missouri System. However, there is some concern among faculty that the integrity of academic institutions might be at stake.

Communication between student and teacher

MU doctoral student Peter Ramey sees a difference between how students and teachers interact online.

In his online British literature class, he required students to write a weekly reading journal using a blog. Here, they were to reflect on what they had learned and pose questions. Ramey then commented on the posts, answering students' questions and helping them understand the content better.

He said he appreciated this consistent, individualized give-and-take with the students that would be impossible in a traditional classroom.

Ramey said another advantage is that interacting online helps some students feel more comfortable participating in discussion than they would in person. Further, he said, there is a value in learning to communicate online — a skill important in many modern work environments.

Use of class time

In her American literature class, Zurhellen covers a range of writings stretching from the time of Columbus until now, so she said it is important for students to take time to think about and articulate their ideas.

She has taught one class entirely online but prefers a hybrid approach. She thinks the face-to-face time in her class is best used for discussion and analysis.

"I'm really trying to get students to see that so much of the stuff that they rely on a lecture to give is available free online," Zurhellen said. "What you should be getting out of this (classroom) experience is talking about the material and the ideas that come out of it."

Kellie Grasman of Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla teaches "Economic Analysis of Engineering Projects," a class that teaches students how to assess engineering projects from a financial perspective. About 600 students take the class each year, including students in a cooperative degree program in Springfield.

Grasman received funding from the UM System to develop an online version of the course to serve students at a distance. In creating material for them, she realized that her on-campus students could benefit from those resources.

Now, she offers the online elements as part of the on-campus version of the course. Throughout the semester, the students may choose to participate in the traditional classroom environment or learn independently or with groups of friends using the resources online.

Grasman expects that the students who come to class have gone over the material for the week and are there to ask questions and work collectively to reinforce what they've learned. She said that because the information is all online for students to revisit as they need to, she spends much less time repeating concepts.
Grasman estimated that on any given day, fewer than half of the registered students show up to the class.

“I'm not offended that they don’t come to my class, because I know they can access any of the content on their own time,” Grasman said. “If they are comfortable with learning independently, it gives me more time to focus on the students who need more input and personal instruction."

Use of technology to aid teaching

Teachers increasingly make use of online communication tools to enhance their teaching. Zurhellen uses Diigo, an online bookmarking tool that allows students to bookmark a link to a webpage and share it with the rest of the class. Students can also highlight and comment on those bookmarked pages.

Zurhellen makes herself available to students via Skype, to answer questions via the Internet outside of class hours.

At the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Lisa Dorner said that to create a successful online classroom environment, it is important not to rely just on writing for communication with her students.

"It is key to constantly research the new free tools that appear almost daily online," she said.

Dorner likes VoiceThread, an online interactive multimedia slideshow that allows students to respond to pieces of media and leave comments for each other using a recording of their voice, text or a video of themselves.

Convenience factor

For students and teachers alike, the convenience of online classes is a major pro.

The earliest distance learning came in the form of correspondence courses, in which course materials were mailed to people who couldn't take traditional on-campus courses. In recent years, though, distance learning has expanded, mostly due to the Internet. Students choose the online format for different reasons to best accommodate their particular constraints.

"One of the main drivers for us is to create opportunities for the students and for faculty," said Zachary March, director of eLearning for the UM System.

"For the students, it's to give them more options on being able to register for courses in an online format that may fit their schedule better," March said. "Maybe they work during the day or have family commitments, and maybe the course isn’t offered on a local campus and they can take it from another campus, so they can get their degree on a quicker timeline. So for the students, it’s all about the convenience factor."

Nicole Bierman, a registered veterinary technician in St. Louis, is enrolled in biomedical pathophysiology, an online class offered through MU's College of Veterinary Medicine.

"Working full time and being a parent and everything else I have in my life, it appealed to me because I could do it on my own time," Bierman said.

She said it can be hard to find the time she needs to do the work for her class, but she uses it to teach her 8-year-old daughter the importance of scholarship.

"We talked about the importance in studying," Bierman said. "I try to incorporate our studying together so she can see how important it is, not just for her but for me as well."

In the same class is Giulia Lino, a sophomore at MU majoring in animal sciences. Lino, who is enrolled in 16 credit hours and has a part-time job, found the flexible hours of the class worked well with her schedule.

"I figured it would be good, because it wouldn’t be an extra class to go to, but I could still learn a lot," Lino said.

The time flexibility potentially extends to teachers. Faculty in the English Department offered Ramey the opportunity to teach his eight-week online course after he learned he and his wife were expecting a baby. Over the summer, he was able to travel, attend conferences and spend time with his new baby, all while teaching.

Concerns among faculty

Despite the opportunities that online learning can provide, there are drawbacks. Ramey suggests there is something missing in how the class communicates online.

"What it won’t develop in students is real-time reaction and thinking collaboratively in the space of an hour," Ramey said. "And that translates into real experience if you have a job. In a meeting you have to be able to think and respond, so it’s not able to develop those skills."

Russell Zguta, chairman of the MU Department of History, said one of his worries is a loss of faculty control over the curriculum.

Zguta’s concern was heightened when he got two phone calls from people outside of MU saying they had Ph.D.s in history and offered to design courses for him. When he shared this information with the history department faculty, it led them to pass a resolution voicing their concerns, which they shared with administrators.

Concerns outlined in the resolution included the potential for online offerings to take away resources from the department itself. Faculty were also worried about maintaining the integrity of courses, particularly ensuring that testing was done fairly.

Ramey struggled with fair testing when teaching his online course. Despite his efforts to make his tests qualitative — requiring students to create their own answers rather than being able to copy things they could find on the Internet — he worried that cheating was still possible.

"I would write exams and quizzes that would purposefully avoid students being able to Google the answer really quickly," he said. "But I feel like students could still find the answers if they were savvy enough — and they are. They can probably find all of that information on the web."

Zurhellen said she never wants to teach only online. She wants to keep face-to-face teaching because it allows her to get to know her students.

"I don’t like teaching fully online because I don't like never getting to see my students," Zurhellen said. "I had good students, but it's the first class I ever taught where I can't remember their names."

Ramey agrees, saying that being with people will always be important. "Whether it's through the mail or it's electronic, face-to-face relationships will always have to supplement that — because we're social creatures, and real social is real bodies and real people talking.

eLearning advances in the UM System

Next fall, MU will unveil a masters’ degree in business administration that will be offered completely online. This offering is part of a trend on the campus toward increasing online options.

Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies, said demand has driven a lot of the growth. Faculty, especially within the College of Education and the Sinclair School of Nursing, observed a need to provide a way for professionals to advance their education while maintaining full-time jobs. This has pushed development of online offerings within the individual schools.

More broadly, Spain said he thinks the expansion of online-based options helps advance the goal of the university to serve as many students across the state as possible.

At the UM System level, March said his biggest project is a system-wide portal for online options. Students will be able to search online offerings in schools throughout the system rather than one campus at a time. This portal also will provide access to financial aid and billing information, as well as to Blackboard.

March hoped to have the portal up and running this fall, but progress fell behind. He thinks it will be done by January.

In addition, the system provides funding for campuses to boost their online presence. Last year, the UM System distributed just less than $500,000 across the four UM campuses to develop online courses, March said. Mostly, that facilitated the conversion of existing face-to-face classes to online.

The money is typically used for faculty release time, hiring graduate students to help build the courses, development of programming, providing opportunities for faculty to go to conferences about eLearning or buying software intended to help illustrate concepts in an online format.

This year, the system will provide $300,000 to $400,000 across campuses to be used for program development. This means that instead of the money going toward individual classes, it will go toward developing clusters of courses that will form certificate programs or full degree programs.

March said he hopes to give out another round of funding in the next year or two to focus again on programs such as these, or maybe one that would cover collaborative online programs across the four campuses.

The UM System has set up additional support within each campus to allow instructors to explore online options. There are instructional designers on each campus to help faculty develop materials that are understandable for online students. Also available are what March called "e-mentors," which are groups of four to five faculty members on each campus who are available to help online development from a faculty perspective.

Committees formed to address concerns

In December 2010, a group called the MU E-learning Task Force was created to make recommendations for how to best oversee a combination of The Center for Distance and Independent Study and MU Direct: Continuing and Distance Education into one body, called Mizzou Online.

Last spring, those recommendations were compiled by the task force and are being used to guide Mizzou Online as it continues to learn how to best operate as a cohesive department.

Academic concerns about teaching online will be addressed in a new faculty committee, called the Online Academic Program Task Force. Leona Rubin, associate professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and former chairwoman of MU's Faculty Council, co-chairs the task force with John David, associate professor of biological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science.

"I think Jim Spain described this very well," Rubin said. "The first committee created the roads for how courses would be delivered, and now we have to create the regulations for the road."

This year, the committee has met weekly and has taken on a new topic surrounding online learning at each meeting. The main issues discussed have been:

Intellectual property. When teachers create an online course with help and technology provided by MU, it is uncertain who owns that course. Rubin explained that most faculty think online course material can be sold, and if that were to happen, it is unclear who would get the money.

Online course approval: Rubin said the council basically agrees that the process for approving a face-to-face course on campus should be the same for online courses.

Money: The task force will need to address the issue of incentives, or how departments and faculty will be paid for their online work, Rubin said. She said that in the past, MU Direct returned money earned from online courses to the individual departments that offered them. Sometimes, depending on the arrangement, money was awarded to the faculty who taught those courses. However, she said, departments and faculty don’t get any extra money for teaching additional face-to-face courses. The task force will examine how this discrepancy should be addressed by MU administrators.

Rubin said she hopes the task force will be finished with its discussions by the end of the fall semester.
After that, members of the task force will share their thoughts in a series of faculty forums, which will include members of the task force as well as representatives of the general faculty. Then the task force will reconvene and formulate recommended policies to go to faculty council for discussion and approval. Council recommendations will then go to the provost for final approval.

'Wave of the future'

Guided by the principles that will be set forth by this committee, Spain said he expects to see MU's online presence continue to grow based on the steady increases in the past.

Despite his hesitations, Zguta said he sees the inevitability of this growth.

"This is obviously the wave of the future," he said. "Most universities are heavily involved. Even some of the finest offer courses online. So, I think we don’t want to be left behind, but at the same time we want to do it in a responsible way."

Ramey agrees that changes such as these within MU should be made carefully.

"All media shifts make everybody nervous," Ramey said. "And they should make us nervous because they threaten older paradigms. How this changes our social interactions, how thinking changes — there’s a lot to be concerned about."

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/qe2M4

Maria Andersen: Where's the "Learn This" Button?

2011-11-29T03:18:00.003-08:00

Learning needs to be more personalized. We all know this. But rarely does anyone describe a practical way actually to accomplish that goal. This presentation will delineate not only how we can (and will) do it, but will up the stakes, arguing that learning could be measured (gasp!) outside of educational institutions, with learners free to gobble up knowledge as they roam the Internet following their changing interests.

Maria Andersen is the learning futurist for The LIFT Institute at Muskegon Community College, as well as a professor of math. She has degrees in biology, chemistry, math, business, and is hoping to defend her Ph.D. in Higher Educational Leadership in March. Andersen's research interests lie in active learning, the study of higher education faculty, interdisciplinary studies, math education, and speculation about the future of education. She writes regularly about education, technology, eLearning, the scholarship of teaching and learning, play, and the future of higher education.

eLearning News

Litigating Workplace Safety and Health Disputes

HIPAA Compliance: 6 Audit Questions (and Answers) for Covered Entities

mHealth Challenges Around Privacy and HIPAA

Health attorney: Google's new privacy policy does not violate HIPAA

From Laggards to Leaders

5 ways to deal with an authoritarian supervisor

Establish your credibility

Build a relationship

Adapt to your boss's style

Learn from your leader

Stand your ground

Lighten that backpack: Obama administration challenges schools to embrace digital textbooks

Education 2.0: Can Digital Learning Day begin a classroom revolution?

On Digital Learning Day, 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology

“We’re doing kids a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship.”

Michigan Announces Plans to Host Digital Learning Day

Celebrate Digital Learning Day With 40 Years of Times EdTech Reporting

The Flipped Classroom

Public Citizen to OSHA: Enforce Labeling Law for Toxic Coal Byproduct

10 Innovative & Practical Applications of SMART Tech

1. Small Group/Center Formative Assessment

2. Virtual Experiences

3. Reteach/Enrich/Remediate

4. Flip the Classroom

5. Abstract Made More Concrete

6. Enhances Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA) Instructional Approach for Mathematics

7. This Board is Your Board…Not So Much My Board

8. Interactive Canvas in Notebook

9. Enhanced Lecture

10. Electronic Professional Learning Communities

Understanding the Impact of eLearning & Distance Learning on Your Net Operating Profit

Study Shows Algebra iPad App Improves Scores in One School

Top Education Next Articles of 2011!

Designing the 21st Century K-12 Classroom

For Digital Learning, the Devil?s in the Details

Eight Tools for Charter School Entrepreneurs

$2 Million Competition Seeks Ideas to Transform Learning

10 Things Chemical Plant Operators Need to Know About OSHA's New Chem NEP

United States and North Carolina homeschool population continues to grow

HIPAA Electronic Transaction Standards Make Progress

A Classroom with Difference: A Whole New World of Learning!

Use OSHA?s Compliance Directive to Evaluate your PPE Program

Test your change management skills

Workplace Performance Services: more than just Training

Give Students Mobile Devices to Maximize Their Learning Time

Mobile learning ? the state of play

Supporting performance by supplying the right type of learning

Smartphones, E-Readers Replacing Textbooks

The Six 21st Century Skills You REALLY Need

Health organizations not prepared for HIPAA audits

Making Education Fun Through Game-Based Learning

Red Flags Rule Compliance: The Feds May Be The Least Of Your Concerns

The Future of Moral Machines

Health organizations not prepared for HIPAA audits

Survey Says, People are Really into their iPads

MGMA Calls for New Contingency Plan for HIPAA 5010 Transaction Standards

Additional MGMA Findings

NASA Challenges Students to Train Like Astronauts

This Year?s 10 Best TED Talks To Share With Students

The learning cycle and the power of asynchronous learning activities

The 80/20 Rule for Learning Transfer

5 tips for 11th hour HIPAA 5010 compliance

6 Apps for Creating Outlines on the iPad:

10 Things Chemical Plant Operators Need to Know About OSHA's New Chem NEP

Dealing with Doctors' Reluctance Toward PHR

Lessons learned from ICD-9 implementation

OSHA Updates Tire Servicing Materials Charts

Warrant in Hand, OSHA Cites Pet Food Manufacturer for Failing to Protect Workers from Dust and Noise Hazards

OSHA NEP Strives to Protect Workers from Chemical Releases

OSHA Pounds Meat Manufacturer for Exposing Workers to Fall Hazards

21st Century Skills are so last century!

Ways To Make Money From Your Job Through Learning

Growth in eLearning within UM System causes change, raises concerns

Maria Andersen: Where's the "Learn This" Button?