Archive for January, 2010

Peak Performance Technologies merges with the Gilfus Education Group, bringing extended capabilities in strategic advisory, independent vendor verifications, vendor selections and program and project management to Higher Education and Public Sector Customers for administrative and academic education innovation.

Washington D.C,January 26, 2009 – Peak Performance Technologies, a management and technology consulting firm dedicated to serving the education and government sector, today announced that it has merged with Washington, DC based, Gilfus Education Group.

“I am proud to be able to take the client relationships we have built to the next level as a part of the Gilfus Education Group,” said President of Peak Performance Technologies Robert Cardelli. “The depth of services we will be able to offer new and existing clients will far exceed the expectations I had when I founded Peak Performance Technologies three years ago. I am honored to be associated with Stephen Gilfus and his organization and his reputation as a thought leader in the higher education community. Our common belief that clients demand consulting services based on honesty and integrity made this merger a winning formula for everyone involved.”

Peak Performance Technologies will bring new service offerings to Gilfus Education Group and an established client base that includes large university systems, private colleges, community colleges and independent school districts. This merger will integrate the firms’ complementary competencies in the areas of program management, financial services, enterprise resource planning, compliance, risk management and business performance improvement.

“We are pleased to welcome Peak Performance Technologies to our team, “said Stephen Gilfus, CEO of Gilfus Education Group. “The companies experience serving education and government organizations offers an immediate benefit for our clients and their capabilities and subject matter experts will greatly enhance our service offerings while enhancing our ongoing go to market strategy. Our firms are remarkably compatible as both the Gilfus Education Group and Peak Performance Technologies share deep experience in working with education customers and leading software and development companies.”

“Peak Performance Technologies will be known as Peak Performance Technologies – A Gilfus Education Group Company while the organizations consolidate operations and integrate clients, consultants and service lines into the existing Gilfus Education Group business model and organization.

About Gilfus Education Group

The Gilfus Education Group is an independent organization that brings together a team of highly skilled industry professionals that foster global education innovation. The team partners with today’s organizational and industry leaders to develop effective and lasting improvements to education and provides independent consulting, technical implementation and industry research services to educational institutions, industry investors and the educational companies that serve them. Since 1997 the Gilfus Education Group team has served thousands of universities, colleges, schools, academic content providers, education and technology companies in meeting their mission critical planning and technology needs. For more information please visit www.gilfuseducationgroup.com.

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he’ll ask Congress for $1.35 billion to extend an education grant program for states, saying that getting schools right “will shape our future as a nation.”

Obama outlined the proposal that will be part of his budget request for this year at an elementary school here, where he also held a short discussion with sixth-grade students.

The $787 billion economic stimulus program that Obama signed into law soon after taking office included $4.3 billion in competitive grants for states, nicknamed the “Race to the Top” fund. States must amend education laws and policies to compete for a share of the money.

The deadline to apply for the program is Tuesday, and officials expect more than 30 states to apply. The Education Department is expected to announce its first of two rounds of awards in April — with Obama saying that not all who enter will get a grant.

The president said that extending the program would allow more states to win grants. He also wants to use some of the $1.35 billion for a similarly competitive grant program for local school districts.

“Offering our children an outstanding education is one of our most fundamental — perhaps our most fundamental — obligations as a country,” Obama said in brief remarks. “Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, and I refuse to let that happen on my watch.”

With the grant programs, Obama is trying to make federal education spending more of a competitive endeavor to encourage states and school districts to do better, rather than a solely formula-driven effort in which states and districts look forward to receiving a certain amount of money each school year, regardless of how good a job they do educating students.

To that end, Obama sees the use of student test scores to judge teacher performance and the creation of charter schools, which are funded with public money but operate independently of local school boards, as solutions to the problems that plague public education.

National teachers’ unions disagree. They argue that student achievement amounts to much more than a score on a standardized test and that it would be a mistake to rely heavily on charter schools.

The “Race to the Top” fund — and the opportunity to compete for the billions of dollars it holds — was designed to encourage states to rework their education systems and bring them more in line with Obama’s vision. Education is largely a state and local responsibility.

So far, more than a dozen states have changed laws or policies to link data on student achievement to the performance of teachers and principals, or pave the way for opening more charter schools.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, called the administration’s plans “exciting.”

Obama is expected to send Congress his 2011 budget proposal sometime next month.

Technorati Tags: 1.35 billion, House Education and Labor Committee, Obama, race to the top

Important Update: Stephen Gilfus, Founder of Blackboard, speaking at Business Breakfast

About Education Industry Forum Breakfast Briefings

This platform for education operators, investors and the community of specialists that bring quality to education businesses continues to give members of the for-profit education industry the opportunity to receive current information and stay in contact with a network of experts and colleagues, Education Industry Investment Forum will be holding a series* of breakfast seminars that offer a uniquely time-efficient way to stay connected between the Education Industry Investment Forum that takes place annually. This is your collective industry action platform.

Upcoming Breakfast Briefing – Capital Deployment, Growth, Government and Building Scale in a New Era for the Education Industry – A Collection of Viewpoints from New York City
This conversation is an exchange of business and investment viewpoints by a small circle of experts and luminaries in the for-profit education industry.

Moderator: TBN
John Bailey, formerly Special Assistant for Education, George Bush Administration
Daniel Pianko, Founder & CEO, The Noah Fund
Doug Mesecar, Vice President, Scholastic Publishing
Stephen Gilfus, Founder of Blackboard, President and CEO, Gilfus Education Group
Josh Schwartz, Managing Director, East Wind Advisors

Schedule for January 20, 2010
8.00 am – Gather and Breakfast, Networking
8.45 am – Introductory Remarks, Education Industry Investment Forum Director Doug Crets and Moderator
9.00 am – Panel discussion begins
11.00 am – Questions & Answers
11.30 am – Business Networking and Card Exchange
12:00 pm – Business Breakfast Ends

Location
Omni Berkshire Place
21 East 52nd Street at Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
(212) 753-5800

The 12th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum will be held March 1-3, 2010 at the Ritz-Carlton in Phoenix, AZ, www.iirusa.com/education

Space at the Breakfast Briefing is limited and will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

To Secure Your Place…
Visit our registration page
Email: register@iirusa.com
Call: +1 888.951.7885 or +1 941.365.2507

*Cost to attend the Education Industry Breakfast Briefing is $95. Payments may be made by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Diners Club or American Express.

Registrants are advised that payment in full is required upon registration and no credit vouchers or refunds will be issued for cancelled registration to the Education Industry Forum Breakfast Briefing.

Technorati Tags: blackboard founder, Education Investment Forum, NYC Education Business Breakfast, Stephen Gilfus

By Josh Fischman
Wired Campus
January 10, 2010, 07:20 PM ET

Las Vegas — “Getting technology tools into the hands of every student and family should be standard practice. It isn’t now,” said the U.S. under secretary of education, Martha J. Kanter, addressing a mix of technologists and educators at the HigherEd Tech Summit here, part of the giant salute to gadgetry known as the Consumer Electronics Show. Nor are best practices for professors to use technology to improve learning standard, Ms. Kanter said: “We are losing ground. We have a lot of work to do to make faculty comfortable with technology and ways to use it.”

But the under secretary was less specific about how the Obama Administration was going to help this happen. Ms. Kanter, who pushed technology programs when she held leadership positions at California community colleges, did mention the Education Department had $350-million for a grants program in best-practices innovation, but did not offer details about how and when such grants would be offered. Some technology executives in the audience noted that private industry was doing a better job of identifying and distributing best-practice modules than the government.

Ms. Kanter, however, was adamant that the administration was focused on quality in online courses and new ways to assess them. “We’ve burdened people with onerous reporting requirements that have little to do with quality,” she said. “Let’s put out a call to our professors. They can tell us what is working and what is not.” George R. Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said that his group was helping to prepare a report on quality endpoints.

Read the full Article at Wired Campus

Technorati Tags: American Association of Community Colleges, Department of Education, HigherEd Tech Summit, Obama, Wired Campus

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities provides critical guidance for 2010 State Policy Issues, providing perspectives on change and Education Innovation.”
– Stephen Gilfus, Gilfus Education Group

American Association of State Colleges and Universities
A Higher Education Policy Brief
January 2010
Top 10 -Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2010 – Full Document
by AASCU State Relations and Policy Analysis Research Team

Heres the List:

1. States’ Fiscal Crises
2. President Obama’s American Graduation Initiative
3. Tuition Policy and Prices
4. Enrollment Capacity
5. State Student Aid Programs
6. Federal Focus on Community Colleges
7. Expansion of Statewide Data Systems and New Reporting Metrics
8. Veterans Education (Implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill and State Issues)
9. College Readiness
10. Teacher Effectiveness

Introduction

In 2009, two contradictory movements shaped the U.S. public higher education policy landscape. At the national level, President Barack Obama placed higher education near the top of his policy agenda, focusing on increasing college access and participation by all Americans and backing it with an ambitious slate of proposed federal policies and programs. An invigorated U.S. Department of Education, led by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is unrolling a vision of reform throughout the K-16 continuum—and has plenty of resources to work with, courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

At the state level, however, rhetoric and policy action were considerably more subdued, with most attention focused on mitigating the effects of state funding cuts to public postsecondary education institutions. This is not to suggest that state policymakers and higher education leaders have completely placed progress and innovation on the backburner. Clearly, however, the main priority is developing short-term solutions to maintaining college affordability while ensuring high-quality instruction in the wake of drastic reductions in state appropriations for higher education.

What higher education state policy issues will be at the forefront of discussion and legislative activity throughout the United States in 2010? Provided here is the consensus of the AASCU state relations and policy analysis staff, informed by continual scanning of state policy activities, current trends, and consideration of events likely to shape the policy landscape. Some issues are perennial in nature, while others reflect near-term circumstances; however, even perennial issues are shaped by current events and take a particular direction in a given year. The influence of any given issue will, of course, vary across individual states. While numerous topics shape state higher education policy, each affecting the issues of affordability and quality, our focus is on the overarching issue of college access.

Top 10 -Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2010 – Full Document

Technorati Tags: Higher Education Policy Issues

In one of the most insightful reviews of the year to come, Lev Gonick shares his top trends for higher education for 2010. Combined with Gilfus Education Group predictions from EDUCAUSE we CHALK 2010 up as a year of continued Education Innovation.”
– Stephen Gilfus, Gilfus Education Group

January 06, 2010
Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio

2010: The Year Ahead for IT in Higher Education

1. Public Cloud Services Go Private.
2. The President’s Climate Commitment Meets the Campus Data Center.
3. Big Science meets Next Generation CyberInfrastructure.
4. Time to Declare the PC Dead and Embrace the Mobile Platform.
5. The E-Book Reader Grows up and Goes to Campus.
6. Social Networking Finds its Niche at College.
7. Course Management Platform Alternatives Make Major Inroads.
8. Serious Gaming Gets Serious.
9. Mobile Security Hits the College Campus.
10. Open Content meets the Open University and the Vision of the Metaversity.

What a difference a year makes. Most CIOs in higher education are turning their 2009 holiday stockings inside out looking for any extra crumbs that Kris Kringle might have left behind. For many technology leaders, the general fiscal crunch facing higher education – and the double digit percentage cuts to IT budgets it has compelled — may have made playing the holiday Scrooge a piece of cake compared to the negative consequences to core IT services and offerings likely in the year ahead.

To those living with the hopeful yet delusional strategy of an early return to the status quo ante, my suggestion is to get use to the so-called “new normal”. The reality of our 2010 technology services portfolio on the campus is likely to make CIO leadership seem more like ‘high siding’, the art of leading a white water river raft down a Class 6 set of rapids, than the image of the captain of the enterprise ocean liner that many associate with the slow moving, reliable, robust, legacy organization on campus. High siding is the deliberate act of leaning the weight of the entire raft and its riders towards the obstacles ahead, rather than approaching the obstacles sideways following the current.

The new normal carries the contradictions of both a fragile macro-economic recovery and a countervailing trend of only modest increases in enrollment and new federal research investments predicted for the fall of 2010 (with the important exception of the community college environment). The new normal is less financial leverage and smaller investments in core infrastructure, including IT on campus, even though the price of borrowing money has never been lower. The new normal is more and faster disruption to the consumer technology eco-system at the same time that levels of investment in our aging IT enterprise infrastructure decline in both real and relative terms.

Finally, the new normal is reflected in the contrarian wisdom of the need to be more, not less, innovative, more creative, not more conventional. During a downturn, at the very moment when the real fiscal pressures leads to squeezing out almost all of our abilities to provide strategic capacity, this is the very time our universities need it most.

The portfolio of managing requirements for operational excellence, customer service, and even more selective innovation (r&d) activity has never been more challenging. Taken together, the prospects of multiple years of negative budget growth in IT on campus, end-user expectations for near real time, free, and fully integrated services to their consumer world (choose your favorite mobile platform as an example), and a series of real Tylenol 3 headaches around security and personal information breaches — both in the enterprise domain and across the distributed parts of the campus — portend for a wild river ride ahead in 2010.

With dueling banjos strumming in the background, if you’re old enough to remember the movie “Deliverance,” here are my top 10 trends for higher education for the year ahead, 2010.

Read the Full Article at Lev’s Blog

Technorati Tags: College Readiness, Enrollment Capacity, Expansion of Statewide Data Systems and New Reporting Metrics, Federal Focus on Community Colleges, President Obama’s American Graduation Initiative, State Student Aid Programs, States’ Fiscal Crises, Teacher Effectiveness, Tuition Policy and Prices, Veterans Education

by Marc Parry
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is closing a grant program that financed a series of high-profile university software projects, leaving some worried about a vacuum of support for open-source ventures.

Mellon’s decade-old Research in Information Technology program, or RIT, helped bankroll a catalog of freely available software that includes Sakai, a course-management system used by Stanford University and the University of Michigan; Kuali, a financial-management program recently rolled out at Colorado State University; and Zotero, a program for managing research sources used by millions.

Now the foundation plans to eliminate the RIT program as a stand-alone entity, a move that was scheduled to take effect Monday, according to a December letter to grantees obtained by The Chronicle.

Mellon described the change as part of an effort to “consolidate resources” and concentrate on core program areas like the liberal arts, scholarly communications, and museums. RIT will merge into the Scholarly Communications program, which will manage its existing grants. Ira H. Fuchs, RIT’s founder, says his position has been eliminated, as has that of Christopher J. Mackie, RIT’s associate program officer.

“It might lead to a reduction in funding for people that want to build large-scale open-source software programs for education,” says David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University who reported the changes on his blog last month.

Read the rest of the article on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website.

Technorati Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, kuali, Mellon Foundation, open source, sakai, Sakai CLE

On October 27, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) issued final regulations relating to accreditation, covering key topics such as distance education, transfer of credit, accreditor disclosures to ED, substantive change, accreditors’ monitoring of institutions and programs, and due process. 74 Fed. Reg. 55,414. The final regulations implement Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) provisions pertinent to accreditation and clarify, update, or otherwise modify existing accreditation-related regulations. The final regulations, which are effective July 1, 2010, are the product of negotiated rulemaking. Although the final regulations generally apply to accreditors in the first instance, they nevertheless affect institutions because they create standards and processes that accreditors must impose on, or follow with respect to, institutions or programs that they accredit. This memorandum summarizes selected final accreditation regulations.

EducationInvestorsUpdate

Technorati Tags: Accreditation, U.S. Department of Education

Gilfus Education Group develops G
Strategic Initiatives for international education institutions and 21st century capabilities..

“Over the last few months we have seen increased collaboration high level strategic initiatives within a multitude of organizations.” said Stephen Gilfus, President and CEO of the Gilfus Education Group. “Colleges and universities, associations and professional societies, technology companies and commercial enterprises, government agencies, and other non-profits are looking to make the leap into the 21st century”. “Our team of industry experts is well positioned to help them make change, execute against new strategies and achieve particular goals.”

Gilfus Education Group Strategic Initiatives programs tailor the nature of the consulting engagement to the specific problems and conditions facing each client providing consulting services that solve problems, navigate organizational change, foster innovation, and develop the capacities of individuals, teams, and organizations.

The Gilfus Education Group has developed the following portfolio of capabilities that we deploy to help our clients successfully address two primary challenges:

* Leading and navigating change; and
* Crafting and executing strategies to achieve particular goals.

Through Strategic Initiatives the Gilfus Education Group specializes in developing our clients’ capacity to lead and navigate during periods of transformative change. This includes developing and mobilizing leadership for Knowledge Age endeavors. We have guided our clients through the substantial change that results from new executing new visions and strategies, implementing and leveraging new technologies, reinventing processes and workflow, profoundly reshaping human resources, and developing e-knowledge commerce and practices.

The Gilfus Education Group and its partners can help our clients to solve all of these problems.

• Developing Organizational Capacity
• Fostering Innovation and Creativity
• Transforming Organizational Culture
• Leveraging Technology to Maximize Value
• Reinventing Processes
• Nurturing Communities of Practice

“Developing Strategic Initiatives in Education and building educational institutions around the world is a cornerstone program for the Gilfus Education Group”, said Frank Ganis, Principal at the Gilfus Education Group, “Our team looks forward to working with various countries in developing their educational initiatives and institutions and bringing them into the 21st century.”

The Gilfus Education Group is an independent management and technical consulting organization that brings together a team of highly skilled industry professionals that foster global education innovation. The team partners with today’s organizational and industry leaders to develop effective and lasting improvements to education and provides independent consulting, technical implementation and industry research services to educational institutions, industry investors and the educational companies that serve them. Since 1997 the Gilfus Education Group team has served thousands of universities, colleges, schools, academic content providers, education and technology companies in meeting their mission critical planning and technology needs.

Our group consists of individuals of the highest caliber talent and experience in educational research, strategy, planning, and technical implementation services. We provide non-biased approaches to:

• Developing Global Synergies in Education
• Education Planning, Policy, Process and Compliancy
• Institutional and Organization Re-Alignments
• IT Assessments, evaluations and vendor selections.
• The Social web and its impact on Educational Institutions
• LMS Assessments, Evaluations and Vendor Selections
• Community, Portal and Identity Management Technologies
• New Media, Content Independence, Management and federated Object Repositories
• Commercial and Open Source Implementations
• Standards based Systems Integration and Customization Services
• Business re-engineering and Market Positioning

With a foundation of more than a decade of unparalleled experience and success leading the eLearning industry, the Gilfus Education Group brings every project unmatched capabilities and personalized focus to achieve outstanding results. The team focuses on fulfilling educational planning and the eLearning, Portal, Content, Infrastructure and Technology needs of R1 institutions, state systems, community colleges, virtual high schools, K12, commercial and government clients across the world. Based in Washington, DC, the firm is led by one of the most respected and innovative executives in the education industry.

• Strategic Advisory
• Education Marketing
• Security and Compliance
• LMS and eLearning Consulting
• Enterprise Resource Planning

Technorati Tags: economic development, Education, Gilfus Education Group, knowledge economy, management consulting, strategic initiatives, technical consulting