Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age

Register for SCUP–45 by Friday, April 30, to save $$. You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

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SCUP Link

The following SCUP Link, in our opinion, may be the best-ever piece from Richard Katz. We are challenged to describe its scope, so what follows is a little longer than the usual SCUP Link. If you read Kamenetz' book, Norris' review of it - which places it squarely in the context of the 15-year discussion of "transforming" higher education that began for SCUPers with the publication by SCUP of Dolence & Norris' Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century in 1995 - and then peruse Katz' "Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age," (described below) then you are likely to be left with a sense of wonder at where we are.

And, where else in your life will you get a chance this year to discuss these ideas and concept - in hallways, elevators, session rooms, receptions, campus tours, and the like? At SCUP-45, of course, with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues from around North American at the world at higher education's premier planning conference.

Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age

In this seminal article from Richard Katz, EDUCAUSE Vice President and Director of the EDUCAUSE Center for App[lied Research (ECAR), Katz argues that higher education may be in a second phase of "transformation" (not his word). He posits that for the past half a century, higher education has used information technology tools as instruments of perception, progress, and implementation. Now, he says:

More recently, I would suggest, we have entered a more problematic, second phase. This is a phase that often follows an innovative shock or disturbance. In such a phase, some people cease to use the innovation as a tool in support of historically defined approaches and begin to reconsider the approaches themselves. In this phase, the inexorable logic of the disruptive innovation becomes too compelling for some to resist. Social conventions begin to crack, groan, and give way, and established institutions — held together by earlier technology, social convention, and history — stake out a niche, or evolve, or die. During the Industrial Revolution, this was the phase when the vertical logic of factories powered by wind or water gave way to horizontal manufacturing methods made possible by the introduction of the steam engine. It was the phase when scribes and scriptorium monks were supplemented and ultimately marginalized and replaced by printing presses — an innovation that had the unintended consequences of spreading literacy in the West and liberating European learning from the Catholic Church. In this second phase, technologies cease being instruments that extend the virtues of the current order and instead become the harbingers and engines of a new order. During these times, our glass is particularly dark because, as Marshall McLuhan once observed, the past is dissolved before the future resolves.

What is unique in this essay is its entry point to the discussion: Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise." Katz gets around to discussion everything you might expect but he does so through the lens of scholarship. For example, if life as a scholar really is so much better now than it was when we were in graduate school, as described below, how unfortunate to have missed it:

Perhaps the greatest boon provided to scholars and scholarship by digital technologies is the last: the propensity of networked people and scholarly resources to negate the "busy-ness" of scholarship. The Internet has freed the scholar from much of the tyranny and expense of finding, acquiring, sorting, verifying, annotating, collating, validating, and classifying information. Before the Internet, fledgling historians, for example, spent considerably less time in the thrall of disputation with mentors and fellow students than they did in the tasks of looking endlessly through search aids, waiting for the machinery of interlibrary exchanges of materials to issue forth, acquiring bona fides and letters of introduction to outside scholars, archivists, and other authorities, and awaiting permissions or refusals to gain access to collections. Only after collections were identified, grants were banked, bona fides were accepted, and travel visas were issued did the apprentice scholar earn the right to delight in finally gaining access to rolls of nearly unreadable microfilm. The tools of search only twenty years ago included a flashlight, and datasets were filed carefully in shoeboxes. Although there may be something to be said for the "slow roasting" required to perfect future scholars, this pre-Internet busy-ness likely detracted from the quality and/or quantity of the discovery undertaken, experienced, or realized, and it likely diminished the capacity of past graduate students and accredited scholars to put isolated facts into perspective (i.e., to engage in the scholarship of integration).

In the context of books like DIY U, the consideration that "higher education" and "higher education institutions" are not necessarily the same thing could cause a sense of unmooring:

Despite Kerr's observation, noted earlier, that higher education is "ever more central" to society, it is not clear that colleges and universities themselves occupy central positions. The Oxford University debate over contract mandates on classroom attendance by students (see below) constitutes just one piece of evidence of how the Internet is empowering individuals at the expense of institutions.14 Today expertise, moral authority, and opinion are just a click away. Scholars are no longer bound to an institution, and some have come to view the institution as merely a platform for the promotion of their global, multi-institutional academic goals and reputation building. When Boyer described the erosion of the campus community and the increasing isolation of the campus from its local community, the year was 1990, before the widespread adoption of the Internet. Since that time, U.S. society has witnessed the emergence of hyper-partisanship and other forms of academic and social fragmentation alongside the breathtaking creation of virtual organizations that are nearly always global in makeup.

Many on the scholarly side shudder at marketing terms like "branding," yet Katz' look at higher education from the scholarly lens suggests that for individual higher education institutions to survive, branding is essential:

For higher education institutions to succeed in the Digital Age, their leaders must devise and communicate a value proposition whose accent is on the institution. To accomplish this, leaders must recognize that branding will be essential. Brands are metaphors that convey the essence of the student experience that is being promised. Some metaphors may accent Digital Age values such as openness, convenience, and comprehensiveness. Other metaphors may connote older values such as tradition, ivory towers, and personalized instruction. Whatever metaphor is chosen, institutional leaders must remember that even traditional values are not necessarily place-bound. If place is to remain central to an institution's competitive position, then that institution's investments and its messages must convey how place factors into the student experience. Institutions that do not or cannot compete on the quality or nature of their physical facilities must develop a different set of metaphors and messages and must learn to use the technologies of the Digital Age to extend their academic communities. Even though many of us associate significant learning experiences with traditional campus physical environments, information technology will allow others to create virtual environments that will emulate — and even surpass — these physical environments of the past.

Katz concludes by describing possible topography changes in higher education and learning and once more makes the point that our institutions may not survive, although he hopes they might prosper:

There is more, much more, to be done to secure the place of the traditional scholarly enterprise in the Digital Age. Some have said that the Internet is the most fundamental change since the invention of writing or since the invention of movable type by Gutenberg. As we participate in the breathtaking progress of science, medicine, and the arts and letters and as we watch the demise of centuries-old industries such as newspapers, I am convinced that some of the great expectations being heaped on the Digital Age are not hyperbolic. What is certain is that computing and communications technologies have empowered the individual and are unleashing a torrent of change. This torrent will reshape nearly all of our institutions, including colleges and universities. Equally certain is that unless we plan for the changes that we can reasonably forecast, the changes ahead will be accidental ones. Perhaps we will be left with waterfront property after the torrent passes through. Perhaps our campuses will have creeks meandering through them. Or perhaps the products of hundreds of years will be swept away completely, leaving institutions that are ill equipped for the competitive demands of the Digital Age.

We are the "lucky" ones: as our old world dissolves, at least we can participate in resolving the new one. If we can once again create a galvanizing metaphor, a general educational philosophy, a set of carefully constructed and widely accepted academic standards, a consensus on the nature of our footprint, a supporting and flexible delivery system, and a portfolio of global partners, then higher education and its institutions will prosper in the Digital Age"

We ARE the lucky ones, as we get to continue this discussion in Minneapolis. See you there!

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education: Reviewed by Donald M. Norris

Fifteen years ago SCUP published the best-seller, Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century by Michael Dolence and Donald M. Norris. So, where else for SCUP's journal, Planning for Higher Education, to turn for a review of this new book about "Transformation of Higher Education" than to one of those authors, Donald M. Norris, who is also a recipient of SCUP's Distinguished Service Award. Norris' review places Kamenetz' book in the context of nearly two decades of thinking and analyzing the effects of information technology on higher learning:

Ms. Kamenetz’s latest book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education sets an even higher goal. Its purpose is to inspire people to think seriously about changing profoundly our approach to postsecondary education, personal learning, and employment. The American model for universal higher education is acclaimed around the world. It has even becomes a sort of “cargo cult” for developing countries. But the author finds our current version to be too expensive, too complex, and too bundled. Moreover, American higher education is based on physical campuses that have been participating in a form of competitive arms race of campus amenities, expanded services, and proliferating administrative functions and staffs.

In conclusion, this is a provocative, important book. It frames these important issues in a direct, journalistic style that is sure to attract a wider audience than insiders’ books on the subject. Ms. Kamenetz will surely be tempted soon to write the sequel (perhaps “Fixing DIY Disasters: How US Graduates Got Their Groove Back”?), either looking back from the future or looking to the future, maybe influenced by higher education futurists such as Paul Lefrere (9) and their projects on DIY universities for global audiences (like www.role-project.eu). Either way, I anticipate that she will be able to report on lots of failed experiments in the sustainability of free-to-consume courses, whether self-assembled (DIY) or not, and she will find a smaller but respectable number of viable, sustainable, fully transformed instances of higher learning, which deliver the success that the US needs and that enable learners to live their dreams, within their means. Meanwhile, the US continues to need globally-elite levels of excellence and innovation, sufficient to generate the surplus wealth that we need to invest in our futures. If Ms. Kamenetz’s readers can take us past the free-trumps-fee game of today, to the more thoughtful and globally-aware debates that can accompany the choices that people make in DIY learning, that will be all to the good.

New Book: Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning

Please scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Peter P. Smith is Senior Vice President of Academic Strategies and Development, Kaplan Higher Education. On Monday, July 12 he will speak at SCUP–45 on "The New Ecology of Learning in the 21st Century." Smith's most recent book is Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning. From a review of that book:

President Obama offered America and the world renewed hope for a better tomorrow. With decades of experience in alternative forms of higher education, Peter Smith grabs that optimistic spirit and seizes the moment to reveal to us the exciting age of Web-based teaching and learning, which is opening access to untold numbers of learners while harnessing the previously wasted talents of millions of people in America and billions around the world. Those seeking insights, a vision of the future, and a chance to join this educational revolution should look forward to Harnessing America's Wasted Talent."
—Curtis J. Bonk, professor, Indiana University, and author, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

The Role of Disruptive Technology in the Future of Higher Education

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

A particularly interesting read if you need a brush-up on your understanding of the impact of disruptive technologies, although this article from EDUCAUSE Quarterly by Katrina A. Meyer is focused on online learning.

So what does the theory of disruption — and the tools that disrupt existing models of teaching and learning — mean for the future of higher education? First, we will hear new software or tools labeled “disruptive technologies” as frequently as we do now. It is guaranteed that the future will see more disruptive technologies, since we seem to like the idea and find it in many forms. Second, simple faith in disruption is faith poorly placed. No tool, on its own, is likely to produce disruption. Disruption takes upsetting the status quo, focusing on student-centered learning, changing relationships, sharpening our insight, and designing instruction to increase learning and lower costs. Third, some tools will and some won’t be truly disruptive. Those that are will probably force a pause in our usual thinking, a reassessment of past procedures, a letting go of past assumptions, and an introduction of a new perspective that opens a new way for doing our work. Truly innovative disruption prompted by technology in higher education will force us to think in new ways, providing opportunities for the changes needed for higher education to survive and thrive.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Is Higher Education an 'Industry' That is Evolving?

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Paul Kim examines some of the implications of looking at higher education as an industry and whether or not, as an industry, it is under external pressures to evolve:

In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed in The Origin of Species that living organisms adapt and evolve through natural selection (survival of the fittest). In the same vein, Charles Fine claimed that when industries face new challenges or environmental pressure, they must evolve or adapt in order to avoid extinction.1 In addition, scholars such as Takahiro Fujimoto2 viewed competency-building competition as part of industry’s evolutionary process, while Ki-Chan Kim and Hi Sook Kim3 viewed “feed forwarding” as an important survival and growth instinct in industry evolution. Although some in higher education might consider such ideas nonsensical when applied to colleges and universities, we can adapt some of these views in trying to make sense of today’s higher education ecosystem.

Listed as key takeways from this article in EDUCAUSE Quarterly:

• To survive and thrive, living organisms, industries, and institutions — including higher education — must evolve or adapt to changing environments.
• The slow evolutionary clock speed and failure to adopt contextualized open interfaces in the higher education ecosystem may threaten its continued survival in the face of new environmental pressures.
• More effective and efficient knowledge creation and distribution can increase the evolutionary clock speed and fuel successful evolutionary changes.
• The higher education ecosystem has produced some projects demonstrating an evolutionary shift in approach that could fuel further successful evolution.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Is higher education more like health care or more like the publishing industry? Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams examine why, if higher ed is more like publishing, it hasn't resulted in what Peter Drucker predicted in 997, that "university campuses will be 'relics' within thirty years." Partly, they think it's because higher ed is more like health care.

As the model of pedagogy is challenged, inevitably the revenue model of universities will be too. If all that the large research universities have to offer to students are lectures that students can get online for free, from other professors, why should those students pay the tuition fees, especially if third-party testers will provide certificates, diplomas, and even degrees? If institutions want to survive the arrival of free, university-level education online, they need to change the way professors and students interact on campus.

Many will argue: "But what about credentials? As long as the universities can grant degrees, their supremacy will never be challenged." This is myopic thinking. The value of a credential and even the prestige of a university are rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior to alternative learning environments, their capacity to credential will surely diminish. How much longer will, say, a Harvard undergraduate degree, taught mostly through lectures by teaching assistants in large classes, be able to compete in status with the small class size of liberal arts colleges or the superior delivery systems that harness the new models of learning?

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

'Guardians' of Higher Education Urged to Embrace More Change

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Will "the guardians of existing institutions embrace transformation, or let history pass them by"? Anya Kamenetz, writing in Inside Higher Ed, poses this question in an interesting essay which begins with a different perspective on the "Original" higher education:

In a faraway colony, one in a thousand people -- mostly young, rich, white men -- are sent to live in isolated, rural Christian communes. Some are pious, learned, ambitious; others are unruly younger sons with no other prospects. The students spend hours every day in chapel; every few years, the entire community is seized by a several-days-long religious revival.

They also get into lots of trouble. In their meager barracks they drink, gamble, and duel. They brawl, sometimes exchanging bullets, with local residents, and bother local women. Occasionally they rebel and are expelled en masse or force administrators to resign. Overseen by low-paid clergymen too deaf or infirm to control a congregation, hazed by older students, whipped for infractions of the rules, they’re treated like young boys when their contemporaries might be married with children. And, oh yes, they spend a few hours a day in rote memorization of fewer than a dozen subjects.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Learning Space 3.0 When Real and Virtual Space Collide

A number of SCUPers have been doing solid work examining and predicting the interaction between physical and virtual space. None have been more outspoken and forward-thinking as SCUP-45 plenary speaker Mark S. Valenti of The Sextant Group. It's a good thing to be looking forward to his presentation in Minneapolis. You can get something of a sneak peek at the kinds of things he'll bring you up to date about by viewing this slide show from his presentation at the September 2008 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative meeting. (We especially like the image of an 1879 class at Ohio State University, where students are viewing glass slides projected by a kerosene-fired lantern.)

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Soon You Can "Print" a Building?

This article is long on personality but has good looks at this evolving technology. "In a small shed on an industrial park near Pisa is a machine that can print buildings. The machine itself looks like a prototype for the automotive industry. Four columns independently support a frame with a single armature on it. Driven by CAD software installed on a dust-covered computer terminal, the armature moves just millimetres above a pile of sand, expressing a magnesium-based solution from hundreds of nozzles on its lower side. It makes four passes. The layer dries and Enrico Dini recalibrates the armature frame. The system deposits the sand and then inorganic binding ink. The exercise is repeated. The millennia-long process of laying down sedimentary rock is accelerated into a day. A building emerges. This machine could be used to construct anything. Dini wants to build a cathedral with it. Or houses on the moon."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

College Degrees Without Going to Class

More than one-fourth of all college students are taking at least one online class. In its "Room for Debate" series, The New York Times recently asked a number of commentators "Who benefits most from online courses — students or colleges? Are online classes as educationally effective as in-classroom instruction? Should more post-secondary education take place online?" Respondents include: Greg von Lehmen, provost and chief academic officer at University of Maryland University College (as good as classroom lessons); Robert Zemsky, professor of education and chairman of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania (another false gold rush); Anya Kamenetz, author of the forthcoming DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (better and cheaper); Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University and the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (making the personal connection); Karen Swan, James Stukel Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Illinois Springfield (flexibility and time); and Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (needs more tech support). A good discussion.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Jeff Abernathy, vice president and dean of the college at Augustana College, in Illinois, writes about his work with The Teagle Foundation, which he says "tests the basic assumptions of a college education."

How many times have I read in the higher ed news of the coming revolution in classroom instruction, in the major, in the tenure system, in governance?
Google "higher education revolution" and you find radical reform rising in every direction. Many are sparked by the billions state systems are losing as our economy lurches out of the tank, others by the increasing commodification of the college degree. Some promise to "transform" the American university as they have transformed -- egad! -- the American newspaper. New models of for-profit education promise a revolution in the higher education business model that is already threatening the viability of traditional colleges across the country.
But I can't help wondering if we've spirited all our revolutionary rhetoric for another day at the office.
We tend to talk ourselves right past revolutions in higher education. Our burning impulse to revitalize learning often concludes with a return to the status quo: we end up arguing, say, over our respective roles in shared governance, or over the turf we'd have to give up for genuine improvement in learning.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Dancing with History: A Cautionary Tale

This is yet another, and very interesting take, on college and university trends - Technology, Demographics, Private-Sector Competition - with the author's exposition of consequences in areas like Research and Scholarship, Teaching and Learning, Community/Civic Engagement, and Management and Investment. It's by Brenda Gourley in EDUCAUSE Review. Near her conclusion she writes:

When I titled this article "Dancing with History," I was thinking of Louis Gerstner's book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? In telling the story of IBM's "historic turnaround" in the 1990s, Gerstner recounts how a very large and hierarchical organization — staffed with highly intelligent people who basically thought that they knew more than their customers did about what those customers needed — almost ran aground.8 I see many parallels with universities — and many lessons. I subtitled this article "A Cautionary Tale" because I think universities are not paying sufficient attention to the massive trends and changes in their environment. I am not alone in thinking that the changes I have described have profound consequences for the role and function, and indeed the business model, of all universities, wherever they may be — consequences that will evidence themselves in some places more quickly than in others, for obvious reasons. I am also not alone in believing that embracing these unprecedented educational trends and changes, along with the opportunities they offer, is vital to addressing the complex issues that face us individually and collectively in the 21st century.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Significant Campus Trends, from College Planning & Management

Amy Milstein describes several trends in higher education that planners may want to know about. It begins with SCUPer George Mathey on what is going to get built, what is not; a trend to optimize existing space, esp. in high profile spaces such as libraries; and the increasing importance of community colleges. Other topical areas covered include: online learning, mergers and acquisitions; carbon planning; then e-books, handhelds, and mobiles:

“The real expansion has been in the public institutions,” reported George Mathey, principal, Dober Lidsky Mathey. “Some specialized privates — like faith-based colleges — have seen some growth, but that is a small slice of the overall picture.”

Schools may do some planning, but Mathey doesn’t anticipate any major construction projects coming up in the next two to three years. Instead, institutions will attempt to make the most of what they have now by optimizing and enhancing existing spaces. “The environment is still being used to recruit and retain students,” he continued. “So construction won’t come to a complete halt.”

SCUP's Trends to Watch in Higher Education is published twice a year. The current issue is available only to members of the society, but archived issues can be downloaded by anyone.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Mobile Libraries Blog

The Mobile Libraries blog will be of interest to many types of planners: technology, academic, facilities, strategic. It defines itself as:

[D]evoted to documenting any and all topics relating to services provided by libraries to patrons within mobile environments. Library mobile services are defined as any and all library services that are provided via mobile technologies.

While the posts often dig deep into the technology of new hardware and functionalities, on February 6 the post was about a recent article by John Dew in The Futurist. That article requires a subscription or a $3 fee to download a PDF, but the blog author has excerpted much of it and describes it thusly:

An educator and strategic planner outlines the trends leading to a long-forecast future for colleges and universities: Global standardization of education content and accreditation, greater diversity in the student body, and more options for where, when, and how learning takes place.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

AASCU: Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2010

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities provides an annual report each year on the top 10 issues relating to policies of the states and higher education. The introduction this year notes what it calls "two contradictory movements" in 2009, in that at the same time as President Obama moved higher education near the top of his federal agenda, most of the policy and budget action was on coping with the effects of some pretty serious funding cuts.

Number 1 on AASCU's list is the financial crisis of the states. Number 2 is the federal American Graduation Initiative. Number 3 is tuition policy and prices. Number 4 is enrollment capacity. Numbers 6 through 10 include: State student aid programs, Federal focus on community colleges, Statewide expansion of data systems and new reporting metrics, Veterans' issues, college readiness, and Teacher effectiveness.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

The Future of Learning: 12 Views on Emerging Trends in Higher Education

Writing in SCUP's journal, Planning for Higher Education, William J. Flynn and Jeff Vredevoogd examine emerging trends SCUPers need to be alert to. The descriptive blurb for this article reads: "On behalf of our campuses, we need to seek out change; to be more flexible, more thoughtful, and more open to student decision making; and to build outcomes measurement feedback into integrated planning."

Read the article online here.

Citation: William J. Flynn and Jeff Vredevoogd. 2010. The Future of Learning: 12 Views on Emerging Trends in Higher Education. Planning for Higher Education. 38(2): 5–10.

Abstract: In 2009, Herman Miller, Inc., a Zeeland, Michigan-based furniture manufacturer, convened a leadership roundtable intended to identify trends that would affect higher education in the year 2015. Representatives from research universities, state colleges, community colleges, private institutions, and architectural and design firms participated in the roundtable discussion and, from a series of exercises, determined a list of 12 future trends. Among those trends, the roundtable concluded that globalization will influence and shape all aspects of teaching and learning. Plus, advancements in technology will drive ongoing changes throughout college and university life and offer new opportunities to enhance and broaden learning experiences. Students will take greater control of their own learning as proactive producers and managers of their own learning solutions, materials, and portfolios. Roundtable participants also concluded that the competition for students and resources will force colleges and universities to sharpen their brands and identities and to distinguish themselves in new ways. Lastly, accountability and assessment tools will continue to become common in defining institutional effectiveness. In conclusion, it is important for colleges and universities to be aware of future trends in higher education so that they can provide students and faculty with a strong, resilient, and vibrant academy for generations to come.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

What's Next? Next Year? 5 Years? Ten Years?

SCUP–45 offers LUs for AIA.

Metropolis magazine's current issue has a feature, What's Next: The 1–5–10 Issue, which is describes as "Predications for the future in the form of predictions—from the wildly speculative to the intensely pragmatic. Some snapshots from among the 15 topical categories:

• Preservation: 1, GPS for disaster recovery; 5, losing old trades skills; 10, laser-scan imaging
• Green Building: 1, On-site energy; 5, prism windows; 10, aerogel insulation
• Landscape Architecture: 1, New levees in New Orleans; 5, "City Sink," embedding carbon storage in existing infrastructure; 10, Soft coastal engineering
• Health Care: 1, Urban Zen; 5, Pleasant smells; 10, Nursebots

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

University Strategic Planning and the Foresight/Futures Approach: An Irish Case Study

An intimate sharing of the environmental scanning, strategic foresight/futures thinking used at Dublin City University.

Citation

Ronaldo Munck and Gordon McConnell. 2009. University Strategic Planning and the Foresight/Futures Approach: An Irish Case Study. Planning for Higher Education. 38(1): 31–40.

Abstract

The contemporary university operates within a global context characterized by ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity. Strategic planning must, therefore, be cognizant of future trends and how those trends will affect the university by creating both threats and opportunities. Our hypothesis is that an approach we refer to as “strategic foresight” can provide us with the tools, methodology, and process to creatively address uncertainty and complexity in our working environment. Dublin City University has taken the lead in Ireland in terms of its emphasis on strategic planning. Its 2005–2008 strategic plan, Leadership Through Foresight, was part of an ambitious foresight exercise that was aimed at informing subsequent strategic cycles. This article reports on this process in the context of the wider literature examining the value of foresight/futures thinking as applied to universities. The article commences with a review of current uncertainties and complexities in the current operating environment. It broadly outlines foresight/futures thinking and then examines universities specifically. It continues by focusing on Dublin City University’s foresight exercise as an example of how foresight operates in practice. Finally, the article concludes by exploring what a strategic foresight approach to planning might look like based on that experience.

Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation

Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.

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What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’

It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works.

That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed.

AARP and Microsoft held series of extended focus group-like sessions with a bunch of Baby Boomers in May 2009. The focus was on technology use and adoption. The results are the white paper, Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation. They'll be of interest to many SCUPers not only because many SCUPers are Boomers, but because of what they reveal about a continuing education market for Boomers as they continue to learn as they age:

Boomers are ready for more technology. They’re actually more likely than those 18-49 — by a margin of 59 percent to 55 percent4 — to agree with the statement “Technology will help me live a fuller life.” And indeed, boomers’ ideas for new technology center around health, communications and the home. Said one Phoenix participant: “How about a phone that has a feedback device to tell you if you’re out of line: like you’re drinking too much, or you’re a little overweight, you’d better cut this out. It keeps reminding you, and when you finally straighten out it gives some positive feedback.” Another participant immediately added: “Or the insurance company gives you the cell phone and it lowers your rates if you behave.”

Teacherless Classrooms: Can We?

"Today the dream has returned, [we have] systems through which chunks of teaching can be 'scaled up' and beamed to hundreds of thousands worldwide.” in Campus Technology magazine, Trant Batson calls this "the FedEx or UPS view of learning; knowledge disconnected from the knower; knowledge with no social or cultural context; knowledge ripped from the conversation, its conversational threads torn and dangling; knowledge as a commodity. How far adrift have we gone that the idea of beaming 'chunks of teaching' to hundreds of thousands worldwide could be called a 'dream? I thought we tried that with television, didn’t we?" Then he makes this twist: A large lecture hall is not the answer, nor is sending lectures out through iTunes, or other media channels. Knowledge is not a commodity. And learning is not performance. Learning is conversation. So, then, the question becomes: How do we extend the conversation to more people and how can that conversation be authentic and lead to active and experiential learning?"