IVY LEAGUE 2.0: Richard Ludlow is modeling his startup on Hulu. | Photograph by Robyn Twomey
THE PROFESSOR: Free online content, says David Wiley, "is just the first step". | Photograph by Tyler Gourley
HACKING HARVARD: Neeru Paharia is behind Peer2Peer University. | Photograph by Ben Stechschulte
Is a college education really like a string quartet? Back in 1966, that was the assertion of economists William Bowen, later president of Princeton, and William Baumol. In a seminal study, Bowen and Baumol used the analogy to show why universities can't easily improve efficiency.
If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can't cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then -- before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia users created the world's largest encyclopedia. Before YouTube Edu and iTunes U made video and audio lectures by the best professors in the country available for free, and before college students built Facebook into the world's largest social network, changing the way we all share information. Suddenly, it is possible to imagine a new model of education using online resources to serve more students, more cheaply than ever before.
"The Internet disrupts any industry whose core product can be reduced to ones and zeros," says Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of education startup Knewton. Education, he says, "is the biggest virgin forest out there." Ferreira is among a loose-knit band of education 2.0 architects sharpening their saws for that forest. Their first foray was at MIT in 2001, when the school agreed to put coursework online for free. Today, you can find the full syllabi, lecture notes, class exercises, tests, and some video and audio for every course MIT offers, from physics to art history. This trove has been accessed by 56 million current and prospective students, alumni, professors, and armchair enthusiasts around the world. "The advent of the Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field," says Cathy Casserly, a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who in her former role at the Hewlett Foundation provided seed funding for MIT's project. "We're changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge."
But higher education remains, on the whole, a string quartet. MIT's courseware may be free, yet an MIT degree still costs upward of $189,000. College tuition has gone up more than any other good or service since 1990, and our nation's students and graduates hold a staggering $714 billion in outstanding student-loan debt. Once the world's most educated country, the United States today ranks 10th globally in the percentage of young people with postsecondary degrees. "Colleges have become outrageously expensive, yet there remains a general refusal to acknowledge the implications of new technologies," says Jim Groom, an "instructional technologist" at Virginia's University of Mary Washington and a prominent voice in the blogosphere for blowing up college as we know it. Groom, a chain-smoker with an ever-present five days' growth of beard, coined the term "edupunk" to describe the growing movement toward high-tech do-it-yourself education. "Edupunk," he tells me in the opening notes of his first email, "is about the utter irresponsibility and lethargy of educational institutions and the means by which they are financially cannibalizing their own mission."
The edupunks are on the march. From VC-funded startups to the ivied walls of Harvard, new experiments and business models are springing up from entrepreneurs, professors, and students alike. Want a class that's structured like a role-playing game? An accredited bachelor's degree for a few thousand dollars? A free, peer-to-peer Wiki university? These all exist today, the overture to a complete educational remix.
The architects of education 2.0 predict that traditional universities that cling to the string-quartet model will find themselves on the wrong side of history, alongside newspaper chains and record stores. "If universities can't find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them," professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University has written, "universities will be irrelevant by 2020."
Wiley doesn't come off immediately as a bomb thrower. He is a 37-year-old member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with five kids. He has close-cropped gray hair, glasses, and speaks softly in a West Virginia accent. But he employs his niceness strategically, as a general in the intellectual vanguard of the transformation of higher education. The challenge is not to bring technology into the classroom, he points out. The millennials, with their Facebook and their cell phones, have done that. The challenge is to capture the potential of technology to lower costs and improve learning for all.
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Recent Comments | 43 Total
August 10, 2009 at 9:41am by Lawrence Linn
Great article, what a rich source of knowledge! I am always impressed at how well a good journalist can summarize an entire field,
August 10, 2009 at 10:24am by Matthew Ward
Open-education is an interesting concept but very scary at the same time. It's an attempt to solve the difficult problems facing our higher education system. The problems are real and this is one attempt to fix the problem. However, from a long-term standpoint, I don't think it's the right solution.
Among the selling propositions for open-education:
1) Free - As more students consume institution resources online, there will likely be increased pressure on a smaller body of real-life students from a financial perspective. As gross tuitions are depressed, additional pressure is put on financial resources such as endowments, grants, and gov't support. The facilities and resources available to institutions become scarcer thereby limiting their abilities to innovate. This argument is countered by those that they say there will always be a market for those desiring physical and formal education but perhaps not. It's possible that cottage industries will develop (such as those mentioned in the article) that will just facilitate these online offerings and those become the dominant model.
2) Access to more compelling classes - There is more access to classes but my concern is what has to happen to sustain this level of access and level of quality.
3) More freedom in lesson selection - I'm hardly an academic planner, but it seems to me that this is counter-productive as kids go straight to ice cream and skip their veggies. There has to be a certain amount of instruction requisite to fully be able to execute on the knowledge. Simply consuming and obtaining knowledge doesn't mean the individual is ready to execute.
4) Macro-level increase in the amount of knowledge available - I don't know that on a large-scale level there will be more knowledge in society. While this model certainly enhances access, I don't believe our existing access points for knowledge were saturated. The assumption is that by giving it to the kids in a digital stream, they will consume more. I understand this consumption on a leisurely level, but as a system with formal checks and balances, I just don't think the attention will be there.
Honestly, I think it must be considered that the move to open-education could have a damaging effect on our education system and by extension, our gross intellectual capital level. I think the confluence of degrading institution resources, devaluing credentials, and enabling "snacking" on knowledge to college-aged kids could have serious long-term negative effects.
Matt
http://twitter.com/hellodelight
http://www.hellodelight.com
August 10, 2009 at 1:56pm by Pavan Yara
Very informative article.
Nptel (http://nptel.iitm.ac.in) from Indian IITs & IISC is also a positive step in this direction.
August 10, 2009 at 5:09pm by Jt Pedersen
I think Matthew's comments represent valid concerns to be considered. My own thoughts:
1) 'Free' is a relative thing. The key driver is really 'dramatically reduced' cost. The article itself, overall, does not hype 'free' rather lower cost. Consider Wiley's own strategy: free (to view) online; $19.95 to download; $29.95 if you want to download -and- print it out.
The key is to figure out an effective cost model.
2) Don't have a simple answer. However what we are seeing is an example of Friedman's, "The World is Flat," coming to academia. There is no resisting that, as access becomes easier and more ubiquitous, the dynamics of competition will change. One thing's for sure, what we have today isn't what we'll have tomorrow.
3) Your concern seemed to have been addressed in the article. Rather than test for memory skills, test based on assessments, measuring competencies. This is really a non-issue in my mind. The same issue has existed for centuries. Just because someone gets a PhD in underwater basket weaving doesn't mean they'll have even one applicable real world skill.
4) This isn't a 'capacity' issue. I doubt, except for a handful of very high-demand institutions, that most access points are at capacity. (Yes, we hear about unemployed flooding comm. colleges, but that'll be relatively short-lived.) You can build classrooms to seat 400 that aren't fully saturated at 12:01am. The issue isn't supply, and it isn't demand, it is -access-.
Accessibility is why a company may have 8 different delivery models to get products to its customers. For instance, a software vendor may sell *direct; *via corporate resellers; *dealers; *retailers; *online; and more. While companies will size the delivery channel to meet demand, rarely will they complain, "We can't sell everything, our pipes are too small."
As holder of an online degree myself, if it weren't for technology, I'd have been unable to get my Master's. The online medium provided the accessibility I needed. Demand was there. I needed the accessibility to be successful.
How many more will come to be educated, if accessibility is improved?
JT Pedersen
www.jtpedersen.net
August 11, 2009 at 5:00am by Paul Moore
It is very easy to see where online learning and other alternative education choices are taking over. To me it seems that greed is the driving force behind higher education at traditional institutions. online casino
August 11, 2009 at 11:28am by jesus arguelles
I am not sure that on-line education –whether free or not--will lead to the positive transformation of our educational system and significantly altering how we consume and process formal knowledge any time soon. I believe that this proposition is overrated and consequently oversold and overbought by many as least for now. Until 3D technology is introduced via the net or any other medium, the current on-line delivery of data and information still extremely challenging and difficult to absorb in a meaningful, efficient and humane way. After seeing on the daily basis how my wife struggled for two years obtaining her masters in public health in the absence of sufficient human interaction, I would be hesitant to recommend to anyone considering receiving a formal education via the net. Why?
1. High tech-based communication technologies cannot replace high touch. High tech can complement but not substitute the element of face-to-face time and the tactile experience.
2. Individual extreme self-discipline is a must or else. Anything short of this, the on-line experience will be less than positive and will generally lead to high levels of anxiety and stress which influence negatively superior educational outcomes.
3. Virtual coaching is essential but of limited value: Having someone to connect via a keyboard and an easily accessing an avatar are poor proxies for the level of connectedness necessary for the learning experience.
4. Yes, the right person for the right education learning experience. Matching the two is tough. I must admit that our collective creativity of global luminaries in many fields is a step in the right direction. In fact, their efforts have led to algorithms and other statistical and behavioral modeling which have aid us in getting closer to performing this seemingly simple and immemorial task. However, this still requires identifying the personality and habits of the prospective consumer of data and information and knowledge and customizing the educational offering or bundle suitable to the consumer of on-line services. For instance, academia and other providers of distance learning options rarely are involved in this highly laborious, complex and time-consuming process. They operate on the caveat emptor or buyer beware concept. Just look at the dollars spent in relationship-matching services such as eHarmony.com even though our economy is coming out of the ICU. Thus, be ready to travel the unknown for a high fee! Sounds familiar?
August 11, 2009 at 11:44am by Dian Schaffhauser
I cover technology in higher ed for Campus Technology magazine (http://www.campustechnology.com), and this is a great summary of a building wave. One complexity that several colleges and universities have recognized is the fact that faculty need training in delivering education online. Anybody who's ever taken a course online knows that some instructors are better off delivering in person and others "have a face for radio." One school -- Wilkes University School of Education (http://www.wilkes.edu/GradEd) -- launched a master's degree earlier this year in online teaching.
August 11, 2009 at 7:19pm by Maria Marsala
Enjoyed reading this article.
However, so what if some people don't want to go to college? We need all types of workers and entreprenurs in this country and not everyone was made to go to college or wants to go. And age has nothing to do with it!
--
Upwards and onwards,
Maria Marsala
Strategic Business Advisor, Speaker, Author and former Wall Street Trader
Cell: (360) 271-8418 Office: (425) 440-9659
__________________________________________________________________
We help business o
August 12, 2009 at 1:22am by Gabriel Leitao
Very nice and interesting article. And I agree with Pavan Yara, NPTEL is doing a great job by providing tons of video lectures for free on YouTube as well.
You might also be interested in another educational website, with more than 30 subjects, and thousands of video lectures, courses and documentaries. It's called CosmoLearning (http://www.cosmolearning.com). Check it out! It is updated EVERYDAY, as opposed to Academic Earth, which only updates its website once every 6 months.
August 12, 2009 at 4:22am by Stuart Shaw
Good article. I think you missed some pioneers – edupunks before the punk movement, if you want – John Seely Brown in his great Minds in Fire www.johnseelybrown.com/mindsonfire.pdf talked in Jan 08 about the end of pedagogy; Lisa Spiro has been researching and arming scholars with punkish digital tools for as long as ive been interested in the subject http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/ and recently Dan Tapscott, author of Wikinomics laid into the debate by heralding the end of the Uni (as we know it) www.edge.org/3rd_culture/tapscott09/tapscott09_index.html There are dozens of others (Mashable beat you to this subject a few weeks ago by the way, but the piece wasn’t as deep as yours), but this is a comment not a list. We too have been plotting away nicely for a year now, with MavEdu coming early next year to enable students and teachers to cut out the publishers – and class boundaries to create their own learning ecosystems. Leave you with one more point: punk is now seen as a mildly amusing, even nostalgic moment. More Spinal Tap than tapping into something lasting. The real winners in this game will be those who make money – I don’t mean here the companies per se – I mean make money for their users (teachers and students).
August 12, 2009 at 8:09am by Bud Thomas
Matthew does make some valid points. However, I have to disagree with him on learning. It appears that one of his primary concerns is not being 'guided' by an experienced scholar in the ability to properly comprehend the learned subjects. This is partially correct...I'd equate this process to having nonprofessionals decipher the constitution - we see it all the time. The belief that the average student fully grasps the constitution and the ability to decipher the legal transformation is preposterous. They do need guidance. However, it would be foolish to paint the entire fence red with a single blemish. I have in fact, met many acquaintances, students and colleagues that are highly motivated scholars that tend to keep an 'open mind' to learning and what they read. in essence, with intense research, reading books, articles and discussion with experts, online learning can be one of the most rewarding experiences in the 'right' direction.
What it all comes down to is this - "every student has the same opportunity to learn, but what they get from their education is completely up to that individual".
If you're concerned about the limited quality education of online learning, you should look at the old brick and mortar campus grounds around this country. Personally, i'd say that the majority of students couldn't really care less about reading more than what's required to get by in a course. If they have the resources (as a well read professor), what good is it if they don't ask the right questions, or if they don't apply themselves? Again, it's a student by student individualistic scenario led by either personal ambition or absolute ignorance and a waste of financial aid.
Bud
August 12, 2009 at 1:28pm by Sesh Kumar
can every " punk " educate - pls enlighten me
August 13, 2009 at 8:24am by Bud Thomas
I'd like to add something else to my prior statement.
It's amazing how many students feel entitlement to a $100K+ senior management position after completing a 4 year education or even MBA. Fact is, I've seen many of these types get completely devoured by those that have completed an Associates that have an innate drive, solid communications skills and common sense. In this world there is no entitlement (unless it's due to nepotism).
Bud Thomas
A.S. Graduate of NY City College (4.0 GPA), Executive VP of Fortune 100 company and member of Mensa (145).
August 13, 2009 at 11:58am by Julie Still
The article was very interesting but seemed contradictory in places.
On p. 88 of the print the author says "It would represent an upgrade ... for the half of American college students who attned community colleges, or even the 80% who attend nonselective universities." If the point of open source college is to let everyone attend any school, then won't every school be nonselective? What is it about Harvard or MIT that makes it better than community or state colleges? If it is the classroom interaction then open source online piecemeal classes won't provide that. If it is the ability to do hands on research then open source classes won't provide that. If it is the things money can buy -- prestigious faculty, well-equipped classrooms, etc., then making it available free will degrade that advantage. If the idea is to make education available to all, well that's what community and nonselective colleges are for.
The editor quotes someone asking "Why is it that my kid can't take robotics at Carnegie Mellon, linear algebra at MIT, law at Standford?" Why can't you cobble together a degree with classes from various schools plus life experience? You can, and there are places that will allow you do to that, but they aren't those schools. College with a rigorous curriculum usually have a structured set of prerequisities. If you want to take robotics at Carnegie Mellon I imagine you have to have taken a number of challenging math and engineering courses first.
The article also references competency testing and that is a great thing. To some degree that is what bar and CPA exams do, but they still want you to have a law degree or an accounting degree first.
I attended a state university (Mizzou! Rah!) and have worked as a librarian at a variety of institutions, including a community college, a selective private university, a selective state college, and a state university. From what I have seen what a student gets out of a class or degree has a lot to do with what they put into it, regardless of what kind of school they go to. The things that seem to engage students are faculty interaction, the ability to do hands on research, and the opportunity / requirement to delve into the literature of their field. A structured curriculum that leads students through a discipline or subject in progressively difficult assignments / reading, so that everyone is on a level playing field really help with this.
While it is said that MIT makes all its course notes, etc. available online, I wonder if that is fully true. Seminars, usually held with senior faculty, are not likely to have detailed course notes. What often happens is that courses taught by adjunct faculty, who tend to earn between $3,000 and $5,000 a course, are videotaped and those courses, notes, etc. are made available. I haven't checked out MIT's online offerings but say this based on anecdotal, local information.
Just my 2 cents
August 13, 2009 at 6:18pm by Samuel Campbell II
Apparently most of the people writing here either already have a degree or pretty much still believe that the existing model works best, because I just keep hearing about the obstacles. This article is asking us to get out of the box and look at the standard educational model differently. There are flaws with current online course delivery but that is because they are trying to satisfy the old model. And because of that fact, internet courses tend to be exceptionally harder as it attempts to earn legitimacy through the abundance of content and requirements for each class. What is needed is an independent accrediting body that is not trying to prove that the classroom is better.
Lets keep in mind that this is an alternative and while it will effect how info is diseminated in brick & mortar schools, it will be a niche market for people like me who get bored in class. The teacher provided us with a Powerpoint which contained all the notes needed in class and I studied that info and slept in class. I got a B only because I didn't study those notes until the morning of the quiz of test. A class like that could easily be taught online. Video, Diagrams, Interactive 3D models, etc...The lab would require more creativity but its not impossible at all.
Have more to say but I'm getting bored of reading. So I will suspend my learning for now and come back later after a nap...
August 17, 2009 at 7:01am by Simone Righini
schools are needed to communicate those rare "primitives" of the thought (I borrowed the term primitives from those inter-language concepts that can be used on cross cultures/languages/social environments). Easy implementations and exercises on that teached primitives, can be done by ourselves.
August 17, 2009 at 12:00pm by John Sneed
The trickiest part of this revolution is loosening the education establishemnt monopoly on credentialing that is protected by law, policy and tradition, and repalcing it with--?
August 18, 2009 at 4:23pm by Steven Outain
I learned almost as much from reading the comments on this article as I did from the article itself... I found the article life changing... I've been in an industry for the last 17 years that has been heavily subsidized through EPA funding for education... Its an industry that everyone on this page can't live without. I've been in all aspects of water and wastewater treatment from municipal, military, and industrial applications. I've recently taken a position in education as the Director over the department for molding the minds of future water and wastewater purification professionals in a brick and mortar institution. I tend to agree and gravitate towards Samual Campbell's approach about the future of education. Buildings, brick and mortar, will never be able keep up with industry from this point forward... If I asked anyone reading this to teach me about "Microbial Fuel Cells" and their importance in the future of wastewater treatment and renewable energy... most likely everyone would cut and paste the topic into google, and then proceed to slide down the worm hole of knowledge and self educate themselves about the topic... everything from youtube to research papers can be found on the subject. If I made it apart of my curriculum to guide you through this portal, then I would feel comfortable that the average person who needed this applied knowledge could get it. prerequisites are of great value and guided learning is a huge time saver... In my previous example a student must first have the basics down before leaping off the deep end. I'm still naive enough to think that if you build a better mouse trap, then you'll catch more mice!
August 18, 2009 at 5:19pm by Charles Carlini
When the Kindle was released a couple of years ago, Amazon head Jeff Bezos described books as "the last bastion of analogue" in a digital world of films, music and photos. And now it seems that the way we learn, the very system with which we have been educating our young for close to 1,000 years, may now be crossing that digital divide.
To be sure, many organizations - universities and colleges included - have already embraced this new world with great success. Take, for example, the University of Phoenix's aggressive outreach to market it's online courses. By most measures, they are the most successful institution for higher education in American history with more than 300,000 students at some 160 learning centers and 100 campuses. Who would have figured this until you began to see those annoying banners popup everywhere coaxing us to part with our hard-earned dollars to satisfy our society's mania for a higher education? And it's because of their aggressive online campaign, which continues unabated today, that have turned them into a household name.
- Charles Carlini
www.SimplyCharly.com
August 19, 2009 at 11:05pm by Tamara Peace
I agree with many of the positions made here, both "enthusiastic" and more "cautious". Choosing an online degree program or set of courses requires foreknowledge of what exactly you want to gain from the educational experience. Do you want to gain a credential for a specific line of work? Do you want a "classic, humanities-based, liberal arts education? Are you seeking to enhance an already highly developed area of competency? Above all, what kind of cultural experience are you looking for, if any one in particular?
Technological advancements have a habit of "making progress" actually "so"--that is, they self-perpetuate, organize, and even control, what we think is "progress". If an technological advancement is even remotely successful, it has a way of making perfectly logical and inevitable "sense" to nearly everyone---and it's this part that is the stuff we've got to watch out for, I think. I've taken many, many online courses, even a whole degree, and my sense is that it is like any other tool we use for learning: what you bring to the experience counts for a great deal, really nearly all of it. In other words, what you have already learned being in the world, a classroom, or in a line of work, often makes the difference in terms of the depth you extract from a given online learning environment. Very often, whether we are talking about in-classroom learning, on-the-job training, or online learning, we forget that it is a matter of having the right timing as much as it is whether or not the instructor or curriculum was "good", or whether the learner was "ready-to-learn". There is an uncanny "right-time-right-place" factor that can be misaligned in one instance, and completely right in another. This is the gamble we all take when we invest in a learning experience, regardless of the medium.
Last point: money will eventually become a factor in this whole matter, or rather, it will become more apparent how these online learning environments are being paid for, and whether it is a matter of changing what we mean by "profitable" when we are talking about digital businesses. Somehow the infrastructural needs (especially around issues of information security and data warehousing) have to paid for---and I know of no labor that willing works for free for long. "Free," as JT Pedersen said above in his comment, is a relative thing---what is expensive to you may be "thrifty" to me. Unlike the usual first adopters of older, analog technologies, there is already something of a cost reduction when you do not have to count the room/board costs of attending a college in person. So, the question becomes, "Where does the business model go from virtually "free"? Are the costs going to be hidden in tuition (are they already)? Or will they be essentially subsidized, covered by endowment or special funding? What about intellectual property rights---does the institution that generates access to the content have sole "rights" to it, or can others link to them, or re-post the material (open source, anyone?), and how would prevention of such re-distribution be enforced if that was desired? And so on. These sorts of questions will generate costs---and so a business model will have to be created that can sustain the growth and development of "free" educational content. The online-only institutions are instructive---they are basically marketing companies (re Charles Carlini's comment above).
August 21, 2009 at 2:56pm by Ann Gamble
Getting material online is certainly lower cost than printing books or paying someone to run a real-time class. But how does the content get generated to begin with? Tuition-paying students are subsidizing the curriculum construction (and the server space) for those of us with web access.
August 24, 2009 at 11:33am by McGanahan Skjellyfetti
While Technology certainly enable access to information and peer dialogue three key issues remain largely unaddressed here:
1) Interaction with well trained professionals is quite costly. Having someone read, critique, and get to know you sufficiently to learn your strengths and weaknesses over time is limited and fairly expensive resource. Technology can help with this but not solve it.
2) Relationships-- education is a relational process. Part of a schooling is about forming relationships and social networks. We also learn differently if people inspire and motivate us. While technology can help this and hybrid models exist, it's much harder to do this virtually than simply making syllabi or lectures available on-line.
3)Investing in new knowledge creation--part of the current cost structure of higher ed is an investment in future knowledge development. That's the premise for providing tenure for folks to go off and conduct research (in addition to development from private industry). Certainly high quality education costs too much and remains inaccessible to too many but we also don't want a future that's so lean that it leaves little inadequate room for new knowledge creation.
August 28, 2009 at 5:42pm by Tina Murdock
It's hardly a new observation, as anything I've read recently, this points to what I think is a major attitude shift in our society. As the Internet alters how both libraries and colleges and universities work, we're not changing only the METHOD of providing education, we're changing the primary PURPOSE of education. I'm very much in favor of broad-based access to information and knowledge--which aren't the same thing.
It does seem to me that if what we as a society really want from
educational institutions now (virtual or bricks-and-mortar) is for
students to learn marketable job skills based in facts and information,
we're going to have to find some other way--in new or existing
institutions--to teach the other important life skills we've always
depended on traditional education to provide: critical thinking,
working together in groups of disparate personalities and abilities,
appreciation of beauty and culture, decision-making and problem-solving...
It's a brave new world.
August 29, 2009 at 9:23pm by Kemp Edmonds
Nice article
August 31, 2009 at 12:56pm by steve cooper
I think this is perhaps the best summary of the disruptive models in higher education. Great work everyone!
Steve Cooper, Founder
www.TechUofA.com
September 3, 2009 at 9:55am by Stacey Simmons
I think the key that is missing is that there is no available solution for institutions. The institutions have nothing to gain and everything to lose in the current model. Granted, the system is fatally flawed, with the most prestige going to research, and thus the true measure of success for professors is their research and grant development skills. As someone who has been in academia a long, long time... the future of the university's teaching is in adapting to the change in the availability of information. Universities were established almost 1,000 years ago around libraries, because information was scarce. The model that we use currently is the leftover of that system. What we need to do is retool in order to deal with the over-availability of information, and teach students how to learn, how to teach themselves, and how to use a discerning eye to sort sources of information, and to make judgements based on their own standpoints. Until universities don't have to choose between research intensive, expensive and prestigious research faculty, and well-regarded, well-intentioned teaching faculty, we will continue to have this problem.
We have developed a tool set that is free for everyone, but that charges the students for credit, and enables the institutions to give it. It forms as an external credentialing system for peer institutional credit. We launch in the Fall of 2010.
Stacey Simmons, PhD
Omnicademy.com
September 4, 2009 at 8:48am by Larry Salas
What's next? Libraries without books? Believe it:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_lib...
September 5, 2009 at 2:36am by Lisa Jeffery, MBA, MA
Great article, thank you. As a university professor, and a corporate trainer, I see how universities are resisting the trend to communicate on twitter, facebook and other social media. I think they need to get on the train, as our students are on that train! Any educator who resists will be left behind!
September 5, 2009 at 2:37am by Lisa Jeffery, MBA, MA
Great article, thank you. As a university professor, and a corporate trainer, I see how universities are resisting the trend to communicate on twitter, facebook and other social media. I think they need to get on the train, as our students are on that train! Any educator who resists will be left behind!
September 6, 2009 at 4:26pm by Mark Montgomery
Where to start when discussing reforming education and applying information technology... A good basis for debate.
I am struck by many issues when this topic is discussed, including here. First and foremost is the argument for education reform as evidenced by the total lack of understanding in our culture about sustainable economics, most certainly to include the vast majority of universities. I found this piece BTW from Angel Cabrera's blog, where as a new president of a leading business school without the investment income of the competition, he's taken a different approach than many-- continuing with the global perspective, embracing distance learning-- learning how to become more sustainable in our hyper competitive world.
The fundamental economic change enhanced by the Web is only touched on here. Take a look at Bill Gurley's blog -- http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/08/24/what-is-really-happening-to-the-vent... and Fred Wilson -- http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/04/the-venture-capital-math-problem.html for a glimpse at the changes underway many of us have been warning about for well over a decade now.
MIT is frankly totally irresponsible for making all of its content available for free-- it speaks to their culture-- the same that awarded phds in math to quite a number of the activists engaged in 40 to 1 leverage algorithms at the core of the financial crisis...
The U.S. is primarily a service and knowledge economy now, which in a few decades time transformed from the world's largest lender to the world's largest debtor, and the answer is to give as much away as free as possible.... subsidized of course by pension funds and endowments filled with mediocre managers who spread the same religion with other people's retirement...
No question that technology can and should radically reform education. What was left of the credibility in our institutions has been lost in this latest, often predicted crisis. It's good to see the education department finally waking up-- I do not expect the unions to however until it's too late-- in much the same way as Detroit. Our universities, public education system, and healthcare industries have been living in a dream state financed by borrowing from the future of those they claim to be helping.
At a time when Asia was rising, when the U.S. should have been aggressively sizing down and improving (dramatically) our institutions-- instead we built the largest bubbles in history while our society has deteriorated by almost every meaningful metric that exists. The guilds fight on with all of their political might to avoid progressive change, embrace their stupidity, ego, and selfishness -- not much different than Wall Street in some respects.
I have been beating my head against the wall of the U.S. culture now for 15 years in an attempt to gain adoption of advanced knowledge systems. All over the world other cultures have listened, passing us by, while we have had to suffer an ever larger series of avoidable crisis.
It's time to scream fire in the house and rebuild from the ground up if necessary-- we don't have time for entrenched interests to stall for yet another generation to retire, leaving their children further and further behind, and deeper and deeper indebted to the rest of the world. Thanks for raisin the issue.
September 9, 2009 at 2:04pm by Mark Montgomery
PS - In systems thinking, which is how I've invested most of my time in the past decade, when the cream isn't allowed to rise to the top due to protectionist barriers like we see in academia, and those systems lose credibility like we have seen in the past dozen years, then they must simply be replaced-- otherwise bad things tend to happen eventually. The university system, which espouses a culture of inclusiveness, is in fact among the most biased guilds left on the planet. Indeed it is beyond biased; more similar to apartheid where if one isn't a member of the ruling class-- sharing the same beliefs with just enough debate to fend off critics, regardless of how incompetent the ruling class is, then they are not allowed in. That behavior represents much of what is known in academia and elsewhere about dysfunctional systems.
Academia must change-- it cannot be allowed to self-regulate and allow peers to control accreditation, or society must reject that accreditation as meaningless-- as I do-- not entirely meaningless, but I have reviewed countless phd theses with enormous variations of quality in the same institution, so those degrees don't mean anything to me.
Another broken part of the system that must be thrown out -- I have dealt with hundreds of professors and other phds who ride the degrees for life, quickly becoming outdated, often unskilled, to include more than a few severe alcoholics and other dysfunctional people protected for life (which would probably include me if I had spent my career in academia), doing great harm.
Given what the rest of society faces, it's time to do away with the system entirely-- not learning-- that is a totally different topic-- it needs to spike up significantly. While many individuals and teams accomplish great things in academia, the system itself is broken-- even evil in some ways in the great harm it does to others. In researching history over the years-- many times I have been struck by the similarities to another institution that rose to power in the dark ages. In any event the trajectory is no longer affordable, so change will occur.
That said-- undermining intellectual capital and the knowledge economy with freeism is about the most self-destructive behavior the world's leading knowledge economy could entertain. .02- MM
September 9, 2009 at 3:02pm by Samuel Campbell II
@Mark You said a lot but you gave no solutions. At this point in the blog, solutions should be mandatory!
September 9, 2009 at 5:28pm by Mark Montgomery
You don't do much homework Samuel- I have done little else for 15 years besides provide solutions.... but I am not visiting BW to promote my work or investments-- they cater to our enemies and customers, not to inventors. If interested, try Google. - MM
September 9, 2009 at 5:42pm by Mark Montgomery
Sorry- forgot where I was for a sec... the answer in IT lies in advanced knowledge systems, and has for many years, but semantics are running into stiff headwaters due to perceived threats to the status quo- in academia and in entrenched corp interests in tech. The EU is investing far more heavily than the U.S.-- Google "Could Semantic Technology Help Get Your Next Raise?"
September 20, 2009 at 10:28am by Joseph Long
Quite an interesting article and topic. I do think more people are leaning away from these higher-end institutions because they aren't exactly necessary anymore.
acai berry
October 20, 2009 at 8:56pm by Tom Caswell
Excellent summary of the transformation that is taking place in higher ed. As I skim through the comments below this article I can only conclude that one of the costs of openness is comment graffiti.
October 21, 2009 at 11:29am by Carl-Henric Nilsson
Spot on! The core of democracy, just a computer away!
November 5, 2009 at 10:51am by Ruth Albornoz
I definitely agree with this guy, the challenge is not bringing the technology to the classrooms is improving learning for all. Technology is there. Everybody has access to the technology but the difference is the how to use it in order to improve the learning process. I am right now doing an internet course about ICT and I can not believe how easy and smothoo lessons can be got when using this resource. Universities around the world have to change in the sense of incorporating more and more the use of ICT in the classrooms.And mainly on this side of the world, Latin America, that we are always behind schedule for everything.
November 6, 2009 at 7:59am by arash farhad
Great! Thanks for this interesting article. After reading this article, I make my mind to learn project management courses now. These courses will help me in future technologies.
November 6, 2009 at 10:53pm by Edgar Degas
Nice Article! I personally feel like we are going to a digital revolution , because the way technology has improved in the last 2 decades it's on heard of
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