Ipso Facto

Imagine a university that has tens of thousands of students, yet few of them even know the name of the president of the institution. A university in which final exams apparently don’t need to be taken in person with a proctor present. A university in which faculty don’t get tenure, never hold full faculty meetings, and seldom know the senior administrators running the school. A university “whose leaders are more interested in making money and building an empire … than in educating students.”

I’m not talking about University of Phoenix or the other bad boys of the for-profit, online education world. This is University of Maryland University College, which, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, has seen high levels of leadership tumult over the past few years and recently saw its top administrator, President Susan C. Aldridge, being placed on indefinite leave. It’s not clear what prompted her removal, and faculty aren’t talking. But the structure of the school and its offerings are hardly typical of state-run colleges, as noted by the Chron:

University College has more than 100 worldwide locations, but online education is at the center of its operation. It claims to be the largest public university in the United States, with more than 90,000 students, many of them part time. Among them are students who work full-time jobs and have little emotional connection to the university, much less to its leadership.

Studying for an exam in the library at UMUC’s academic center in Largo on Tuesday, Ejike Michael looked perplexed when asked by a reporter what he made of Ms. Aldridge’s unexplained absence. Mr. Michael has spent a year at the college taking classes toward a master’s degree in information assurance, but he sheepishly conceded he had never even heard of Ms. Aldridge.

“I don’t care. I don’t know. You come here and do what you do,” said Mr. Michael, hunched over a giant tome, Network Security: The Complete Reference.

Mr. Michael says he is fascinated with his classes, which are offered at odd hours that cater to working adults like him.

UMUC, while state-run, shares some features of the flexible, online-heavy, and career-focused for-profit institutions that play such a prominent role in delivering education to adults.

The college exists “in this gray area between the two,” said Richard Garrett, an online-education expert who is managing director of the consultancy Eduventures. UMUC officials felt “more freedom than perhaps the average public institution has to embrace new delivery modes, new audiences,” he says, “but have equally felt that [they're] still part of a state institution.”

But some of the same qualities that help the institution compete in the adult market may also help explain the almost total silence surrounding Ms. Aldridge.

University College employs a largely adjunct faculty. Of nearly 2,000 instructors, 88 percent are part time, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. Multiyear contracts, which a handful of nonprofit colleges offer in lieu of tenure, are rarely offered at the university.

Because they don’t have tenure, UMUC faculty are afraid to speak out. But a small group of faculty based in Asia were brave enough to question the school’s policies and direction under Aldridge, reports the Washington Post:

The faculty faulted the Aldridge administration for alleged cuts that struck them as unfair, such as cancelling math, language and writing labs, requiring students in science labs to pay for “a nonexistent laboratory kit,” declining to pay instructors to teach tutorial labs, and refusing to compensate faculty for travel expenses and even for the cost of white-board markers.

“The administration is continually offloading institutional expenses onto faculty and students alike,” one respondent wrote.

The administration unilaterally reduced online classes to eight weeks, shorter than the average college semester, and did so “without discussion with the faculty,” Whealy wrote.

Aldridge “consistently and strenuously opposed” attempts by Asia instructors to form a faculty governance group, an indication, in their minds, that she was reluctant to involve faculty in decision-making.

Welcome to the 21st century college.

Over on the Invantory blog, I have just posted Craigslist category list quietly expands, after I noticed the company created a half-dozen new “by dealer” categories.

Craigslist is an unusual company in that it seldom announces new features or functionality using press releases, blogs, or other means. To most people, it looks like the site has barely changed since the late 1990s. But change does come, usually in the form of small unannounced feature changes or tweaks to its terms of use.

I only noticed the new categories because I had recorded the old categories last November, and realized that the list had changed sometime in the intervening three months. The new categories were formed by splitting appliances, auto parts, computers, electronics, cell phones and rvs into “by owner” and “by dealer”. Judging by a regular stream of angry comments in the Craigslist forum, many ordinary buyers and browsers were frustrated by dealers taking over the standalone categories, and often using tactics like overposting to drown out the listings from ordinary sellers. The new split categories makes search a lot easier, although as I noted in my Invantory blog post, dealers can still abuse the system.

Related bit of news: We are getting ready to launch our own Craigslist app. Stay tuned for details …

From running several student-oriented blogs, I know that lots of people are searching for information about grad school. The search keywords that show up in my traffic logs are telling. “Is -name of school- worth it”, “will a degree from -name of school- look good on my resume” or “will a degree from -name of school- help me get a good job” are three common examples that are typed into Google, and end up on my blogs.

But one thing I don’t see nearly as often are searches relating to the quality of the programs in question. This is unfortunate, not only because I spent years blogging about research, readings, classroom exercises, and hands-on projects (all indicators of quality and a window into the experience of the grad school programs I attended), but also because it tells me many people don’t care about quality. Rather, the focus is what hiring managers will think of seeing the diploma or school name on a resume.

It’s sad, because grad school can be a wonderful experience for people who feel passionate about a certain topic or hunger for learning. It’s also a hard academic journey that will derail people’s personal lives and careers.

Devin Cole, writing for the Boston Globe, has a nice take on whether or not someone should go to grad school. He writes:

You may be looking at grad school for engineering, art, or business. Whatever the field may be, go because you want to and are excited by thought of it. Go because you know its worth giving up whatever else you might do for a few years.

Don’t go just to boost your resume.

Don’t go because you think you’ll make more money.

And don’t go because you don’t know what else to do.

In other words, go to grad school for the right reasons. If it’s just about getting a few lines of text on your resume, or improving your standing in the eyes of friends, families, or coworkers, be honest with yourself about your priorities and what really matters in life.

Next month, my company plans on releasing the first version of our Craigslist app. It’s not going to be complicated (in fact, this early release will only let users buy on Craigslist with an iPhone or iPad), but we think it serves a big need in the marketplace. On a PC, Craigslist’s Web interface is oriented toward text. The Invantory app is really oriented toward photos, as you can see from the screenshot below:

If there are more than two photos, all it takes is a horizontal swipe of the thumb to see the other photos. The other innovation relates to browsing: Instead of reading text lists, users are presented with thumbnails. This makes it much easier to visually identify items of interest and skip over items that are of no interest.

We’re excited about the app and hope you can give it a spin. You’ll be able to download it via the front page of Invantory.

Dave McClure, a well-known Silicon Valley investor who now runs 500 Startups, has a thing about design. He notes:

Addictive User Experience (Design) and Scalable Distribution Methods (Marketing) are the most critical components of success in consumer Internet startups, not Pure Engineering Talent.

The emphasis on good design is a concept that’s gaining more traction in the startup world. I see it in the slick Web pages and mobile interfaces of hot new products, but I also hear the UX mantra from experts who say that while “minimum viable product” (MVP) is important for getting a prototype out the door and starting feedback loops, the design element can’t be ignored. An advisor for my startup, Invantory, suggested that for a consumer-oriented product, the emphasis should be on “minimum delightful product”, or MDP, rather than MVP. The post struck a nerve … to date there have been more than 40 retweets of this post.

How many classifieds apps are out there? In my review of Craigslist Mobile, I observed about a dozen in the Apple App Store and 20 in Android Market. Why they exist is not a surprise — Craigslist is the most popular local classifieds marketplace in existence. But what I did find surprising were the poor design, user interfaces and user flow (collectively known as user experience, or UX) that had gone into the apps. For instance, as I noted in the Craigslist Mobile review:

” … The Craigslist Mobile UX is not helped by placing all required fields right next to each other on the same page, which requires lots of text input and screen manipulation, and increases the chances of making a mistake. The ‘add photo’ button takes users to stored photos on the iOS device; a separate button accesses the camera directly.”

There were many other UX issues identified in the review. Options crowd each screen and are hard to find or activate, users are forced to navigate back to the home screen to change settings, strange color schemes are used, text rather than photos dominates the browsing experience, etc. Some of these issues relate to Craigslist’s requirements for listings, but others are the direct result of choices the app designers made. Despite the crowded field, the designers of other apps often decided to copy what was already out there rather than innovating on UX and differentiating themselves.

Is there any other way to do classifieds app UX? Certainly. EggDrop, Zaarly and Rumgr point the way, with a user-centric (rather than engineer-centric) approach to design, UI, and user flow. There is no clutter on the small screens. Good color choices were made by the designers. Images and maps look sharp. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for, switch views, or change options. This is the way classified app UX should be.

An example of good UX: Zaarly

It’s so disappointing to hear about experiences like the one described below, but at the same time, I am not at all surprised. It’s the story of yet another earnest student signing up for distance education classes at the Harvard Extension School, hoping to get access to “Harvard faculty and rigorous academics” and “engaging online classes” (as the ad above describes) and instead being treated to this:

Last term was my first semester at HES and I was surprised at the lack of assignment and test feedback that I received in the courses.

In my first course, I didn’t receive a grade or comments back on a ten page essay that was worth 15% of my final grade or on my final exam that was worth 25% of my final grade.

In my second course, I never received any feedback or grade on a book review that was submitted in mid-November, on 50 page group project, or on the final exam. In the aggregate, these three items represented 55% of my final grade.

My third course consisted of a series of smaller assignments worth either 5% or 10% of my final grade each. The instructors provided grades and comments for most of these assignments, but at the end of the course, feedback and grades for the final couple of assignments wasn’t provided.

The responses to “DesertDog” are telling. “Unfortunately your experiences are not foreign to me,” said one person, who has been taking distance education courses for years at the Extension School. Another Extension School student said, “Last semester, I took a course and did not receive notification of any grades until the final grade was posted at the end of the semester. I got no feedback at all. It was quite frustrating,” A third online education student reported that “Some of my professors didn’t give me any feedback on my final projects and essays even when all the final grades were posted and even while I asked them several times.”

I’ve written about distance students being given a watered-down educational experience by the Harvard Extension School in the past (see “A sad day for the Harvard Extension School” to read yet another case). The usual responses? “You don’t know what you are talking about!” (even though I have taken distance education for credit) and “how dare you belittle distance education students!” (even though I am criticizing the Extension School and its policies, as opposed to students who try hard to get a good education).

Of course, not all distance education faculty are unresponsive. But regular reports like the ones above are a sign that many students feel misled about the Extension School’s promise of access to Harvard faculty and a true Harvard experience.

In the six months since our Craigslist app has gotten off the ground, there have been a lot of ups and downs. Of course, ups and downs are a part of any career. But I quickly found that the mood extremes are far more pronounced at a startup than at a multinational tech media company or large research university.

It turns out that the startup roller coaster actually quite typical. Fortunately, there are tactics for managing the highs and lows, as I discuss in the Invantory blog (see link, above).

I also think it’s important to note that while we are still in the early stages, every day when I get up, I look forward to getting started on Invantory’s business. The challenges change every day, but the wins, when they come, are positively exhilarating.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on the rise of “badges”, a reward/accomplishment system that some online educational services like Khan Academy are using. Here’s the summary:

Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain—intentionally so—to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom.

The article goes on to ask whether easy-to-understand badges that denote focused study or skills will undermine traditional diplomas, which offer very little insights into the specific skills or abilities that were attained.

In my opinion, this is unlikely, at least for some professions such as information technology. We’ve seen efforts like this in the past, such as certification programs based on in-class or online instructions. While certification exams are a prerequisite for certain occupations, they are sometimes seen as a poor indicator of how well someone will perform in real-world situations. Badges and certificates also suffer from short shelf-lives relative to the value of a diploma, which has brand power that can last decades.

It will be interesting to see how the badge system evolves, and whether it can gain strength through acceptance of widely followed standards or partnerships with testing organizations or government agencies.

On the official Invantory blog, I’ve written a long post about the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in Kendall Square. This is where Invantory and hundreds of other nascent tech startups spend a lot of time planning, meeting, coding, and testing. It’s a fascinating place that provides office space, amenities and a network that can provide advice and connections necessary to build a business.

The CIC has really helped my partner and I get our dream off the ground, and we already have a prototype Craigslist app in the hands of testers. The CIC is also relatively cheap, at least for those startups that are taking advantage of the “C3″ co-working space. Read the blog post to learn more and also be sure to follow updates from our company, either by reading the blog or following us on Twitter.