“Fewer international students head to US for 3rd-straight year,” by Natalie Schwartz in Education Dive

“Although the number of international students in the U.S. hit an all-time high, growth has slowed for the fourth-straight year. Moreover, those gains were largely driven by increased participation in the optional practical training (OPT)​ program, which lets foreign students work here in their fields of study for one to three years after graduation.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Don’t be fooled by the “all-time high” gross number of international students in American colleges. That is likely the forward momentum created by years of aggressive recruiting. Pay more attention to the fact that growth has slowed four years in a row, and that much of what growth remains is coming from an unsutainable source (under the current administration’s restrictive visa policy).

When a major university system like U. Illinois has bought insurance in case enrollment from China drops by more than 20%, be on the lookout for a structural shift in international enrollment.

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“Why New Technology Is A Hard Sell,” by Morgan Housel, on the Collaborative Fund blog

“1. Convincing people that you can solve their problems is harder than it seems because people don’t want to be told that the way they’ve always done things is wrong. […]

“3. Familiarity is hard to distinguish from utility, so ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ becomes synonymous with ‘this is the best way to do it.’ […]

“4. Grasping the value of new technology requires imagination. But unless you have skin in the game, that doesn’t seem worth the effort because technology is supposed to make things easier and simpler, not wrack your brain.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

These lessons (including ones not quoted above) apply not only to technology, but to any kind of change within slow-moving, status-quo biased organizations like schools.

Once you understand how people will react, you can begin to create a plan to prepare the soil to accept new seeds.

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“No Need for Speed,” by Lory Hough in Harvard Ed Magazine

“Q: If speed doesn’t matter, what does?

“A: My analysis showed that time wasn’t the predictor — mastery was. When students are allowed to master material, they perform better in the course. That seems obvious, almost too obvious to need a study to tell us this, but if it’s so obvious that mastery is key, then why aren’t all of our schools adopting models of mastery learning and why haven’t we done away with rigid fixed-pace instructional environments?

“Q: What’s the connection to the myth of the average?

”A: This research was actually born from thinking about the myth of average. The myth of average highlights that individuals are jagged, meaning they have multiple dimensions that cannot be reduced to a single score or number and that they change over space and time. This incredible human variation is natural and normal and is very important. And yet the way that we have standardized education assumes that slow students are inherently less capable, and giving an average amount of time for the average student to learn is sufficient.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Would it shock you to learn that students who answer questions more quickly aren’t smarter than those who take more time?

Would it shock you to learn that extroverts who are quick to raise their hands and talk aren’t smarter than the introverts who are slow to raise their hands and who are more inclined to listen?

So then why aren’t more schools exploring mastery-based approaches? (Check in with the Mastery Transcript Consortium for more on this topic.)

For a longer read on “the myth of the average,” we strongly recommend The End of Average and Dark Horse, both by Todd Rose. (These should be required reading for all educators.)

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Question of the week:

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