Dr. ANTHONY PICCIANO

The purpose of this presentation is to examine the influence of two major developments in online learning namely blended learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the future of education.  Both of these developments evolved from the basic asynchronous online learning model that arrived in the 1990s and continues today.   Blended learning which combines aspects of face-to-face and online  learning into a single course or academic program, gained widespread popularity in the early 2000s.  The term MOOC was coined in 2008 and made a major breakthrough at Stanford University in 2011 when over 100,000 students from around the world enrolled in a computer engineering course led by Sebastian Thrun.   Dr. Picciano posits that the pedagogical value of blended learning combined with the scalability of MOOCs will be major drivers in education for the foreseeable future.    Other aspects of online learning technology related to individualized learning environments, learning analytics  and instructional ecosystems will also be presented.   Dr. Picciano will draw specifically on his own work in online and blended learning, the research of Allen & Seaman, and recent MOOC developments such as the agreement between San Jose State University in California and Udacity to develop jointly a series of remedial and introductory courses to be implemented in the latter part of 2013. 

Anthony G. Picciano is a professor and executive officer in the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is also a member of the faculty in the graduate program in Education Leadership at Hunter College, the doctoral certificate program in Interactive Pedagogy and Technology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and CUNY Online BA Program in Communication and Culture. He has extensive experience in education administration and teaching, and has been involved in a number of major grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, IBM, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 1998, Dr. Picciano co-founded CUNY Online, a multi-million dollar initiative funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that provides support services to faculty using the Internet for course development. He was a founding member and continues to serve on the Board of Directors of the Sloan Consortium. In 2010, Dr. Picciano was the recipient of the Sloan-Consortium’s National Award for Outstanding Achievement in Online Education by an Individual.

Dr. Picciano's major research interests are school leadership, education policy, Internet-based teaching and learning, and multimedia instructional models. Dr. Picciano has conducted three major national studies with Jeff Seaman on the extent and nature of online and blended learning in American K-12 school districts. He has authored numerous articles and fourteen books including Educational Leadership and Planning for Technology, 5th Edition (2010, Pearson), Data-Driven Decision Making for Effective School Leadership (2006, Pearson), Distance Learning: Making Connections across Virtual Space and Time (2001, Pearson), and Educational Research Primer (2004, Continuum). In 2007, he co-edited a book on blended learning with Chuck Dziuban entitled, Blended Learning: Research Perspectives (The Sloan Consortium). He is currently co-editing a follow-up to this book with Chuck Dziuban and Charles Graham. He has just completed a new book entitled, The Great American Education-Industrial Complex: Ideology, Technology, and Profit, co-authored with Joel Spring that was by published by Routledge. In 2010, Dr. Picciano received the Sloan Consortium's National Award for Outstanding Achievement in Online Education by an Individual.