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.

Teach Online or Wither: Leveraging Technology to Increase Enrollment, Capacity, and Revenues

Arthur F. Kirk, president of St. Leo University, writing in University Business magazine: "But you need online courses and online programs. Traditional and non-traditional students increasingly demand—and often require—them. The time may have passed for the "big growth" strategy, but if you want to protect what you have and hopefully grow it, you need to be online, now! Since 2002, online education grew by a compounded annual rate of 19.7 percent. It grew 12.9 percent in 2007, according to Sloan data. During that same period, overall collegiate enrollments grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate . . . What is required? The first component of success is institutional commitment. Far too many schools falter because of vocal pockets of faculty resistance and lack of strong leadership. Smaller private not-for-profit colleges remain the least likely to offer online classes or programs. Yet a majority of them embrace a mission to educate working adults and/or depend upon those students to balance budgets. While chief academic officers generally believe that faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online courses, fewer than half of private college CAOs believe their faculty do so . . . Those opinions ignore mountains of data that demonstrate no differences in learning outcomes between online and classroom courses. They also ignore the National Survey of Student Engagement, in which "distance education" students reported being more engaged than traditional students. Negative faculty opinions run counter to those of business leaders. According to Excelsior College/Zogby International's online survey of business executives, among those familiar with online programs, '83 percent strongly believe that degrees earned via online programs are viewed favorably compared with those earned in a more traditional way.'

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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

Not a Library: Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at University of Nevada, Reno

The new 295ksf building was conceived as a knowledge facility for the 21st century and is seen as "the beginning manifestation to substantial curricular change on campus, and a likely sea change in learning, I believe, in general." The former library had more than 1M books. The new facility has room for 3M, but is never expected to use the space for that purpose. UNR has several SCUP members, including director of facilities planning and analysis, Gary Bishop, facilities analyst Jed Hammer, executive vice provost Marc Johnson, interim associate vice president Stephen Mischissin, assistant vice president for planning, budget and analysis Bruce Shively, and vice president for administration and finance Ronald Zurek. We have several useful links for you:

• This article by Denise Harrison is in Campus Technology magazine.
• This link will take you to the MIKC's own, under construction, home page.
• From this link you can access a case statement for the MIKC, time-lapse photography of the project, and construction milestones and facts.
• The Facilities Services Department at UNR shows three large projects currently under construction and has links to several sets of guidelines: project development process, sustainability, and design and construction standards.

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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

2010 Horizon Report - What Tech Is Coming & When?

The annual Horizon Report examines trends in information technology adoption and makes predictions in 1-year, 2-3-years, and 4-5-years horizons of likely adoption and impact to higher education. If your planning in any way is affected by technology changes (and whose isn't?) then you will want to download the 2010 Horizon Report and at least scan it.

For example, about gesture-based computing (4-5-year horizon) the report has this to say:

For nearly forty years, the keyboard and mouse have been the primary means to interact with computers. The Nintendo Wii in 2006 and the Apple iPhone in 2007 signaled the beginning of widespread consumer interest in — and acceptance of — interfaces based on natural human gestures. Now, new devices are appearing on the market that take advantage of motions that are easy and intuitive to make, allowing us an unprecedented level of control over the devices around us. Cameras and sensors pick up the movements of our bodies without the need of remotes or handheld tracking tools. The full realization of the potential of gesture-based computing is still several years away, especially for education; but we are moving ever closer to a time when our gestures will speak for us, even to our machines.

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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

MACR

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/02/glaciers_sea_level_and_climate_change

What Happened to the Computer Lab?

This free webcast on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, should be of interest to many SCUPers. EDUCAUSE describes it this way:

Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by Beth Schaefer, and the topic will be "What Happened to the Computer Lab?"

Over 80 percent of respondents to the annual ECAR study of undergraduate students report owning laptops, yet usage of expensive public computer labs remains high. Although computer labs might still be necessary, one can’t help but feel that traditional labs are anachronistic in a world of wireless connectivity, iPods, and smart phones. Labs are expensive to equip, staff, and maintain, and often the layout maximizes the amount of equipment that can be put into a given space rather than the creation of a comfortable or stimulating learning environment.

Rather than predicting an entirely new model, this presentation will focus on low-cost changes that can be made to the design, layout, and operation of existing computer labs to meet both the changing needs of students and the necessities of the economic recession.

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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

MANAGING ONLINE EDUCATION: The 2009 WCET-Campus Computing Project Survey of Online Education (22 Oct 2009)

This survey contains more than can be summarized here, but you should go download the executive summary and possibly watch the archived webcast. The bottom line is that online education programs are marked by:

• Rising Enrollments,
• Unsure Profits,
• Organizational Transitions, and
• Higher Fees, and Tech Training for Faculty

The full abstract for the survey report is:

Enrollments are up and rising, profits are often uncertain, and organizational arrangements are in transition according to a new national survey of senior campus officials responsible for managing online and distance education programs conducted by WCET and The Campus Computing Project. Additionally, the new survey data suggest that students enrolled in online programs may pay higher fees than their on-campus counterparts, that many campuses have mandatory training on their faculty before sending them “into the web” to teach online courses, and that quality still looms as a large question for online education programs.

Three questions about enrollments indicate that campuses participating in the survey have experienced healthy gains in good economic times and bad – and that campus officials expect enrollments in their online programs to continue to rise in the coming years. Fully 94 percent of the survey respondents – typically the senior campus officer responsible for online or distance education programs – report enrollment gains in their online programs between 2006 and 2009; almost half (48 percent) report online enrollments rose by 15 percent or more during this period. Similarly, asked about past year numbers (fall 2008 vs. fall 2009), 95 percent report rising enrollment in their online programs; almost two-fifths (38 percent) report a one-year gain in online enrollments of 15 percent or better. Finally, when asked to project enrollments in their online programs over the next three years (2009-2011), 98 percent of the institutions participating in the survey affirm enrollment gains: almost half (47 percent) expect online enrollments grow by 15 percent or more over the next three years.

For more information, please download the accompanying PDF copy of the executive summary and the handout from the WCET Conference presentation on October 22nd. Also available below is the video webcast of the WCET conference presentation.

Changing Jobs in Difficult Financial Times

This concise set of processes is written as though for a CIO, but you can replace "CIO" with your new title, and "IT" with whatever your work will be, and it still provides solid advice:

It may sound rudimentary, but scrutinize the budget. A new CIO role requires a thorough review of the technology department budget. Reviewing the last three years of budgets and "actuals" against budget may produce insights into budgeting and spending habits. For example, as a new CIO at one institution, I found $80,000 in a part-time temporary employment budget line which had not been spent in the previous three years. We were able to repurpose those funds and provide a real impact for the institution. The budget and "actual" information can also highlight items where unspecified "contingency funds" are stored. These funds may be an unofficial contingency fund or they may be funds that have been forgotten over time. Identifying these funds and putting them to good use would be a welcome move in tough economic times.

Online Learning Produces Better Results Than Face-to-Face?

This US Department of Education report, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning, can be download for free (93 pages). According to Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, in the higher education part of the analysis, online learning was unequivocally better than face-to-face, and "blended learning" produced even better results.

Download it here:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

The Power of Waste: Managing Technology for Abundance, Not Scarcity

Did you ever wonder, when you were told to spend saving storage space by finding and deleting old files, whether it was worth your time? (It isn't.)

"When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world."

This is a thought-provoking piece from Wired magazine and well worth the time to read it.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/mf_freer

How Technology Will Reshape Academe After the Economic Crisis II

This is a (free) archived EDUCAUSE webinar:

"[F]uture generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-09 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to bring the wisdom of its scholars together with the acumen of its technology leadership and the ingenuity and determination of the universities leadership team to make a difference. This webinar . . . explore[d] a range of technological-informed 'opportunities' from the pragmatics of shared services models to 'transformational' arcs of activities in internationalization and open education resources."

Check it out here:
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/HowTechnologyWillReshapeAcadem/170013

May 11: How Technology Will Reshape Academia After the Economic Crisis.

If indeed a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, future generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-09 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to bring the wisdom of its scholars together with the acumen of its technology leadership and the ingenuity and determination of the universities leadership team to make a difference. In this archived (free) webinar, Lev Gonick, Vice President for Information Technology Services/CIO at Case Western Reserve University, explores a range of technological-informed 'opportunities' from the pragmatics of shared services models to 'transformational' arcs of activities in internationalization and open education resources.


Read on:
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/HowTechnologyWillReshapeAcadem/170013

A New Day is Dawning: Whither IT Leaders?

Whither IT leaders in the near future? Richard Kartz concludes:

"As our attention shifts away from producing computing power, we must become adept at helping others use this power to accomplish the purposes of the higher education institution while assuring them that their rights in cyberspace will be honored and protected. More than ever, we will need to understand those purposes and speak the language of learning and discovery, so that we and our institutions will not be lost in the clouds. It's the dawn of a new day."

Read more here:
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/ANewDayIsDawning/171785

Cyberinfrastructure, Funding, and the NSF

The NSF’s Academic Research Infrastructure Program: Recovery and Reinvestment (ARI-R²) and MRI (Major Research Instrumentation) programs offer a lot of funding for campus IT infrastructure. What's the best way to plan to get some of that money spent on your campus? This webinar, presented and attended by top experts, does a good job of laying out how important it is to have your needs tied to strategic priorities, and more. The link goes directly into the webcast.

http://educause.na3.acrobat.com/p57311865

Tools: Should You Twitter? Some Mini-Case Studies

Here in the SCUP office, we have found instant messaging to be an amazing useful and core communications tool. We are also experimenting a bit with Twitter, and also with Yammer (which has a little more security on it). That's why we found this article to be interesting:

As of October 2008, Twitter was used by more than 3 million people according to Twittr, a search engine for Twitter accounts.

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[and its used for academic planning:] “It’s become a very tight little community of members who bounce ideas off each other, share fun things, use each other for any sort of questions,” says Petersen. At Penn State, all that connectivity through Twitter eventually led to a daylong professional development event last August. The new Learning Design Summer Camp was almost entirely designed by this community.

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Twitter also has a small but growing following among the higher education web and communication community, as indicated by the early results of an online survey I administrated in October 2008 about different web services targeted to this community. When asked about their communication channels of choice to receive professional development information, 19 percent of the 540 responders (all professionals working in higher education), named Twitter as one.

The 'Ownership' of Learning and Web 2.0+

Interesting thesis: Instead of building stuff (learning IT) we want, how about using stuff the students already use?

When using software applications supported by the university or college, students are not driving. They are in another iteration of the classroom that is owned by the teacher. The teacher is driving. Some institutions have tried to get around the no-own, no-learn conundrum by creating a non-institutional-looking portal named "My [something or other]." These institutions understood the problem: If technology is owned by the institution, it is no more liberating to the mind than the teacher-owned classroom.

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It's time for a model of co-discovery I read about recently where students all choose a Web site for the class to try out and evaluate. The teacher didn't know which site they would choose so the students owned the choice and the site they had chosen. The students didn't know how the site could be used for teaching and learning. So, both teacher and students needed to learn from each other. They chose a number of sites during the semester and succeeded in using a few but discarded most.

The Future of the Internet III - Looking at 2020

The entire report can be downloaded in PDF here:

Here are the key findings on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020:

The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.

The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.

Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.

Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing arms race, with the crackers who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.

The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

Painting the Clouds: Outsourcing Ourselves!

The writer is writing of information technology administrators, but . . . can you see parallels in other parts of the institution?

One of the great ironies for those of us in higher education information technology is that, in the coming years, doing the best-possible job for our institutions will mean finding the optimal ways to replace our functions with outside services. In other words, a critical part of our job will be to outsource ourselves as effectively as possible.

The reasons behind this new job responsibility are several developments that people may already be weary (and perhaps wary) of reading about: cloud computing, outsourcing, software as a service (with the cute acronym SaaS, which sounds oddly Swedish to me). Sometimes writers will give that usual list and finish it off with “and other things,” without venturing a guess as to what the other things might be. In any case, what this comes down to is that much of what the current IT organization does for its institution will be performed by external entities in the future.

Glimpses of Our IT Future: What’s Green, Mobile, and Regulated All Over?

This resource is from EDUCAUSE Review: "Focusing on “glimpses of the future,” the 2008 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee looked at five IT technologies and trends of importance to higher education: green enterprise computing; location-aware computing; virtual worlds; business process management; and regulatory compliance."

No, it’s not a corny joke your six-year-old might tell. “What’s green, mobile, and regulated all over?” is a fairly succinct description of today’s evolving IT environment. More than ever, we find we are dealing with a new interpretation of Moore’s Law. As technical capabilities continue to double regularly, energy, economic, and regulatory constraints on those capabilities are increasing exponentially as well. The 2008 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee attempted to capture a glimpse of the collective future for IT professionals in higher education, anticipating not only the evolving technologies but also ways to address the ever-evolving constraints placed on our ability to provide the technologies that our institutions have come to expect.

Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth

Maybe you use Wikipedia, maybe you sneer at it, maybe you contribute to it. No matter, it's an important part of academic life in 2008 and if you read this article, subtitled "Why the online encyclopedia's epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy," you will certainly know more about how Wikipedia content gets to where it is than almost anyone else you know:

Why should we care? Because Wikipedia's articles are the first- or second-ranked results for most Internet searches. Type "iron" into Google, and Wikipedia's article on the element is the top-ranked result; likewise, its article on the Iron Cross is first when the search words are "iron cross." Google's search algorithms rank a story in part by how many times it has been linked to; people are linking to Wikipedia articles a lot.

This means that the content of these articles really matters.

The 'Developing Country" Model of Information Technology: How is Afghanistan Like Miami Dade College?

Yet another source of information about how financial pressures may be causing pragmatic leaps forward in virtual education.

Miami Dade College is unique in that it is arguably the largest and most diverse college in the nation, but our concerns are the same as those of smaller, community-based colleges in Florida and elsewhere. We serve students who need financial and academic support in order to attend college, and we do so with a per-student allotment that is several times lower than that of public universities in the state. In terms of institutional funding, Miami Dade is the equivalent of Afghanistan competing against the European Union.

However, leaps in the adoption of technology can help Miami Dade to keep up with the Joneses. More and more, students are pushing the future landscape of education toward online learning. The Miami Dade Virtual College, established in 1997, has exceeded annual growth projections of 25 percent. Seemingly overnight, the student population of the Virtual College has become bigger than that at four of the eight actual campuses, and it is hard to predict how much larger it will grow. Twenty years ago, we could have easily predicted new construction, but who could have predicted a landless, building-less college? Even though online courses require investments in software and course design, the cost savings from the reduction in physical space are obvious and extensive.