Using Technology

The University is Dead! Long Live the University!

James L. MorrisonProfessor Emeritus, UNC-Chapel Hillhttp://horizon.unc.edu Editor-in-Chief Innovate

U.S. Higher Education in the 20th Century
Type: 2 yr, 4 yr, universityGeographically defined market areasFunction: teaching, research, serviceMostly residential/bricks and mortarLecture mode of instruction predominantDegrees based on credit hoursPredominantly self-contained Print research publications organized by commercial publishers & associations

Change Drivers

DemographicsGlobalizationEconomic RestructuringInformation Technology

What Lies Ahead in Technology
Diminution (Nanotechnology/micromachines)Wireless networks/Wireless Web/Wi-FiNet PC/ Web TVGroupware/P2PHigh Definition TVElectronic booksSimulationsVirtual realityExpert systemsWWW; Web course mgtLow-earth-orbit satellitesVideo conferencingGrid computingOpen source software

Comparative Costs: Paper vs. Online
Cost of paper purchase order: between $50 $70Cost of online purchase order: between $1 - $5 Cost of paper check transaction: $1.07Cost of online check transaction: $0.01

Cost Comparisons
Ciscos residential classroom = $1,800 per workerCiscos Web-based classes = $120 per workerDows in-class health and safety training = $80 million per yearDows DE health and safety training = $50 million per year

Pew Learning and Technology Program
BYU first-year writing course-enrolls 3,400 students in about 170 sections redesigned: cost per student dropped 41%Drexel introduction to computer programming: cost per student dropped 36%Florida Gulf Coast into to fine arts, cost per student for 2,400 students is $50 compared to $132 students in traditional format

The Internet Enables Educators To:
Center learning around the student Focus on the strengths of individual (and more diverse) learners around the globeMake lifelong learning a practical reality
Web-Based Education Committee, 2001

The Changing Higher Education Environment
Certification monopoly at risk employers concerned about competencyemployers relying less on diplomasOutcomes assessment coming on lineWestern Governors UniversityAccreditation agenciesNew competitionTraditional service areas fair gameNew for-profit educational providers

The Changing Higher Education Environment
The bookless campuse-LibrariesNetLibraryQuestiaXanEduJones e-global LibraryServices24-7 reference desksOnline chat book advicee-Book reading devices on loan

The Calendar
Rio Salado College in Phoenix The University of Phoenix

Old ParadigmNew Paradigm
Learned centric

Semester/tri-mester/quarter

Set enrollments (e.g., once a year)

Institutions act independently
Learning centric

Varying lengths of time for learning modules

Continuous enrollments (e.g., once every two weeks)

Institutions act with partners

Old Paradigm New Paradigm

Degrees based on credit hours

Information transfer via classrooms/ library
Degrees based on competency exams

Information transfer anytime, anywhere

Old ParadigmNew Paradigm
Student role = empty vessel

Faculty role = actor

Faculty lecture

Faculty responsible for content, media, assessment
Student role = knowledge creator

Faculty role = director

Faculty use projects, shared learning

Faculty work as part of instructional team

Old ParadigmNew Paradigm
Publications refereed via professional associations and commercial publishers

Print publication the primary mode of information transfer
Institutions publish professors papers, drafts, notes via open Web accessInstitutions sponsor their professors manuscripts to refereed Web-based open access professional journals

Free online publication as prominent as print publications

How to Free Up Resources
Move all financial transactions to the InternetShift to open source software for routine administrative and business operationsInstall WLANS in lieu of hard-wiringOutsource in-house computing operations

How can college and university leaders change institutional culture to more effectively address the demands and challenges of the future?

The title of this presentation is a takeoff on the words used by town criers in historic England who, upon the death of the reigning monarch and the forthcoming crowning of a new monarch, would go through the streets proclaiming, "The King is Dead! Long Live the King!" (or "Queen," as circumstances required).Although change in social institutions is seldom rapid, I do believe that we are currently undergoing substantial changes in the way colleges and universities will function in the future and that these changes will be reflected in new conceptions of educational markets, organizational structures, how we teach, and what we teach.

If we recall how higher education looked in the latter part of the 20th century . . .
We see that most colleges and universities had geographically defined market areas, were mostly residential (except for public two year colleges), with the lecture mode of instruction predominant. Most faculty members considered their primary teaching responsibilities to be presenting content and assessing how well that content was learned. Curricula were built on the logical progression of introductory content courses to more specialized or advanced content courses; the curricula were offered in specific time frames (semesters, quarters, trimesters) within which students were usually only able to matriculate at specific timesin many cases, only once per year. Degrees were based on the number of credit hours earned (seat time). Professors' research products were refereed and sanctioned via professional associations and commercial publishers, primarily through print journals and books. Although some colleges and universities participated in consortia, most institutions operated independently. My argument is that this picture will be different in the coming years due to driving forces . . .
Much of my paper went to describing how these forces are affecting higher education. In noted in President Whites materials that the US is losing its edge in science, math, and in technological innovations, with China and India coming on as major competitors in these areas.

We should note that of these forces, information technology is also a driver in globalization and economic restructuring.. . .
There are a myrid of technological innovations and developments that serve to enrich the educational environment. When we combine smaller, more powerful, and less expensive (and therefore more accessible) computers with the power of the Internet to quickly connect people across the globe via audio, video, and text, we have the means to transform education, and, indeed, our culture.
Using IT certainly although expensive initially, can result in substantial savings in such things as purchase orders and checks.
e-learning, which can also result in reducing instructional costs. In the corporate world, these costs are substantial because of the cost of travel and accomodations during instructional periods. As shown in this next slide, they can also result in oncampus instructional costs . . .
As Carol Twigg reports from her Pew funded course redesign program . . . These costs were reduced because professors, instructional design, and media specialists worked in teams to prepare large class courses, which were then taught by one professor and a slew of graduate students. Much of these courses were project-based, and were supervised by graduate students, under the general supervision of a professor. Twigg reports not only substantial savings in costs, but gains in educational attainment.
The Internet allows intensive interaction among a wider variety of more diverse learners who, together, bring more to the table than the learners on campus can alone. eLearning allows education to be personalized to each user, so that each student is given a targeted set of materials based on his or her specific educational goals and previous achievements. E-learning allows us to provide students exactly the material they want for exactly the purpose they want to achieve at exactly the time that they need it. It is 24/7

At the same time, the Internet allows material to be updated dynamically, which creates an up-to-the minute resource for students.

Perhaps most importantly, the Internet also allows for collaboration in a way that has not been possible before with technology-based learningcollaboration not only with the student at the next desk, but also with a student half a world away.

For example, at NC State, a business school professor, instead of lecturing to his class on the principles of business, has designed a series of projects for students to choose to work on based on their interest. He has agreements from alumni from his classes through the years spread throughout the world in multinationals, and agreements from his clients to be available as resources to student teams. The Internet and his pedagogical mind-set enables him to deliver a very popular and useful course to his students.

The higher education environment is changing.

Legislatures (state and national) are increasingly interested in performance-based measures, which will enhance the drive towards competency-based degree programs and project-based portfolios as outcomes measures.

New for-profit providers rely on technology; they are unencumbered by physical plant, tenure, and the industry mind-set--they can rewrite the rules, capturing the most lucrative segments.

Universitas 21 represents new competition. In 1997 THE MEDIA BARON RUPERT MURDOCH linked his giant News International company with the 17-member university network in 9 countries in a move designed to capture the major share of the rapidly growing global market for online higher education. Universitas 21 is an international network of leading research-intensive universities. Its purpose is to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the member universities and to create entrepreneurial opportunities for them on a scale that none of them would be able to achieve operating independently or through traditional bilateral alliances. They are leading the trend for universities to embrace internationalization and to operate effectively across natioinal and regional boundaries as well as within their traditioinal market areas. Collectively, its members enrol about 500,000 students, employ around 40,000 academics and researchers and have over 2 million alumni.UBC, McGill, and U of VA are the North American institutions; there are European institutions (e.g. Edinburgh, Glasgow), Australian/New Zealand institutions (e.g., Queensland, Auckland), and Asian (Peking, Hong Kong, national univ of Singapore).

Other changes in the landscape are depicted on the next slide. . .
The bookless campus, e-libraries, 24-7 reference desks, and e-books are increasingly being used.
Some schools are revolutionizing the college calendar. For example, Rio Salado College in Phoenix starts each of its online courses every two weeks. That means that any student who wishes to take a course never has to wait more than two weeks to start. In addition, although each course is advertised as a 14-week class, students are allowed to increase or decrease their pace.

The University of Phoenix uses a cohort model, in which a course begins as soon as between 8 and 13 students are ready to start.

The bottom line of the argument I have presented thus far is that as a result of the driving forces of demography, globalization, economic resturcturing, and information technology, we are witnessing a shift of paradigms in higher education.

Some of this shift is depicted on the next slide. . .

the mindsets of professors will change from regarding themselves as content providers, faculty members will have to transform themselves into designers of learning experiences for an increasingly diverse student population. Students, meanwhile, seen today as empty vessels into which we must pour content, will increasingly be seen as junior colleagues who acquire and construct knowledge while working through project-based courses.

The traditional openness of scientific research has been severely constrained by the commercialization of scholarly publishing. While the original genesis of the Internet was to facilitate the free sharing of ideas and discoveries among academicians, the Web is now used by the publishers of expensive scientific journals to sell individual article reprints at $15.00 to $50.00 apiece. Not only can reprints from open access publications be freely downloaded by non-subscribers, but the data-bases from which the authors conclusions are derived can also be downloaded, re-configured and compared or coalesced with other data to produce new insights and hypotheses to goad and guide further research.

The seismic event that heralded the arrival of the open access movement in post-secondary education was MITs 2001 announcement that it would put all 2000 of its courses on public access websites within ten years. OpenCourseWare (OCW)

Institutions becoming the primary publishers of academic work will in the long run free up resources. Other ways to free up resources are . . .
Using the Internet, wireless LANs, open source software, and outsourcing are ways in which institutions in the future can free up resources.

If you buy the argument presented here and in the US Higher Education in Transition paper, the central question is [next slide]
I propose that we use our remaining time on this question.