Bates, A. and Sangra, A. (2012) La gestión de la tecnología en la educación superior Barcelona ESP: Octaedro:ICE-UB
The Spanish version of ‘Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning‘, is now available from Ediciones Octaedro.
Videos have now been posted of presentations at two conferences in British Columbia, both looking at the future of digital learning.
The digital future of higher education, Thompson Rivers University
This conference was held at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in February. It was organized by Norm Friesen, Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices.
Altogether there are four videos from this conference, all available from here
1. I gave the opening keynote on the topic ‘The Challenge of Change’, drawing mainly on the results from our book, ‘Managing Technology in Higher Education.’ I argued that universities and colleges were unduly cautious in their goals for learning technologies, and that it was difficult to justify the high cost of learning technologies from the results of current mainstream practice. (60 minutes with questions and discussion).
2. The second keynote speaker was Michael A. Peters, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He drew a broad brush picture of social media, web 2.0 and open education. He made the point that social media/web 2.0 were primarily commercially driven, and in some ways were usurping the roles of public education, by controlling and aggregating access to knowledge and information driven by commercial goals. He argued that open education (OERs, open publishing, open pedagogy, open learning systems, etc.) offered an alternative to the commercialization of the Internet, enabling universities and the public education system to regain the role of organizing and managing knowledge for the public good. (60 minutes with questions and discussion).
3. The first panel session was on the digital future of higher education in British Columbia. The speakers were Cameron Beddome, Thompson Rivers University, Edward Hamilton, Capilano University, and David Porter, BC Campus. David Porter talked about the five challenges and five discontinuities (open education, mobile learning, engagement of learners, social learning, shared services) facing higher education, with lots of examples of the ways new technologies are changing education and how students learn. Edward Hamilton explored the history of sociotechnical systems from a perspective bridging Foucauldian genealogy and critical theory of technology. He rejected the ideological positions of ‘essentialism’ and ‘instrumentalism’ and argued that technology is a social as well as a technical process. In the context of education, he sees teachers as educational designers, both influenced by technology, and also influencing how technology is used. It is important to integrate technology use within a pedagogical framework. Cameron Beddome presented an explanation/description of the well-established principles of open learning that derive from the open university movement that dates back to the late 1960s.
4. The second panel session was a discussion/debate between Mark Bullen, BCIT, and Norm Friesen, on the proposition that the net generation will revolutionize education. Mark Bullen argued against this, and although Norm did not personally accept the opposite position, he gamely put forward the arguments of Don Olcott, Marc Prensky and other supporters of the notion.
I’ve already posted a report on this instructional design workshop, but the organizers have posted both the report and the video (35 minutes) of my summary of the discussions at the workshop on which the report was based.
Comment
All of the above sessions dealt with the future of digital learning in one way or another. As we all know, predicting the future is somewhat unreliable, but certainly trends can be identified, as can their implications.
These presentations really fall into two camps: theory and practice. As the psychologist Kurt Lewin said, there is nothing more pragmatic than a good theory. Michael Peters and Ted Hamilton both provided very thoughtful analysis of the underlying social and philosophical issues that underpin the Internet, the knowledge society, and their implications for digital learning, universities and the public education system. Norm Friesen and Mark Bullen discussed what this means in terms of the kind of students now entering our higher education institutions, and how we should respond. The ID workshop was all about changing practice in a rapidly developing digital environment.
I share with Michael Peters a concern about the increasing control over knowledge and information that is now being exercised by commercial companies such as Google and Apple. However, commercial control over knowledge is nothing new; it has merely been transferred from broadcasters and publishers to IT companies (and massively scaled up). The fear is that public education institutions (and universities in particular) will be increasingly marginalized with creeping privatization of learning as a consequence. Nevertheless I think that universities in particular, while aware of the changes, have little idea about how best to respond to this challenge. The open education movement is one response, but while important it is not sufficient, in my view.
The three sessions that focused on practice (David Porter’s and both mine, one at TRU and the other at the ID workshop) were attempts to offer practical ways for universities (and colleges) to respond to these challenges.
What appears to be lacking (particularly in Canada) is what I would term a political debate about the role of public education in a digitized world. What policies (if any) should governments be putting in place to protect free and public access to information? What limits (if any) should be placed on commercial companies in the areas of privacy, security, access to and manipulation of information? What should be the rules (if any) regarding intellectual property in a digitalized world? (Canada has been trying to change its copyright legislation, but is in a hopeless mess with it, because government and ultimately the public – you and me – have failed to lay down clear and fair principles to guide the legislation. Instead the government is trying to balance competing interest groups, not all with the same level of resources. The Canadian government – or rather their privacy commissioners – have done a much better job on the privacy side, but most of the thinking here is coming from lawyers, not from educators). How should knowledge be assessed and accredited so that the public is protected from incompetency and fraud? And above all, how should higher education be organized and managed so that it operates in the public interest in a world where information is increasingly controlled by a very small number of semi-monopolistic commercial entities?
I don’t have the answers to these questions (I’m not sure anyone does) but we need increasingly to promote discussion on these issues and bring them to the attention of political leaders, as they affect us all in our daily lives. I’d be really interested in readers’ views about this larger picture in which digital learning finds itself.
Lastly, a comment about media and format. I found it extremely useful to have access to the videos after the event. I was surprised how much I missed when sitting ‘live’ in the audience (and I missed a couple because I had to leave early). One for lecture capture systems. However, I’ve spent four and a half hours watching all these videos. In particular, I had both a text and a video of my Just ID contribution. The text can be read in five minutes, the video takes 35 minutes.
For busy people, text will win out over video any time, in terms of condensing the message. Nevertheless, there are subtle differences between the two formats. If you really want to analyze the difference between text and video compare the text version with the video version of the Just ID presentation. Although the content is almost identical, the message seems subtly different to me, although it’s hard to put a finger on it. It should be remembered that the video presentation was done on the fly, so to speak, while the text version was carefully written up afterwards. Any reactions from readers on the difference between text and video, specially in terms of time cost-benefits?
Bates, A. and Sangrà, A. (2011) Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Co.
Now out! The book is available in cloth or e-book from Jossey-Bass, at US$45 a copy (but see below), or from most booksellers.
More information about the book, including summaries of chapters, scenarios from the book, and opportunities to discuss some of the issues, can be found at http://batesand sangra.ca If you order through http://batesand sangra.ca you should get a 20% discount.
The book argues that most universities are too conservative in their goals for technology, that it is difficult to justify the current investment in technology in terms of improved learning outcomes, and suggests a raft of strategies to enable institutions to get a better bang for their buck.
Every VP Academic/Education should have a copy at their bedside!
Terris, B. (2009) University Uses ‘Clickers’ to Quiz Students in Multiple Location Chronicle of Higher Education, September 14
The University of British Columbia recently completed a trial of a new satellite polling system by i>clicker, which sells student-response systems. The new system allowed students on three campuses, all part of the university’s Distributed Undergraduate Medical Program, to respond to questions in a simulcast lecture . I>clicker hopes to make the product widely available by January 2010.
The university’s Distributed Undergraduate Medical Program enrols students from across the province. Students can study at UBC’s main campus in Vancouver, or in partnership with the Universities of Victoria and Northern British Columbia, on the universities’ campuses at Victoria and Prince George. Programs are delivered in more than 80 communities in BC, and include nine clinical academic campuses and 13 affiliated regional centres located in hospitals across the province. The problem-based program is delivered through a mix of local small-group face-to-face sessions, video-conferenced lectures, an extensive set of web-based resources, and local clinical laboratory work. For more on this very successful program (resulting in more GPs working outside the main urban area of Vancouver) see:
Snadden, D. and Bates, J. (2005) Expanding undergraduate medical education in British Columbia: a distributed campus model CMAJ, Vol. 173, No. 6
Is e-learning failing in higher education?
In previous blogs, I have discussed whether e-learning is failing in higher education. To answer the question, I have examined the expectations or goals for e-learning, and whether they are being achieved.
Finally, I come to the last goal or expectation: that e-learning will increase the cost-effectiveness of higher education. I will argue that this is the most important and valuable of all the goals for e-learning, but is the one that is furthest from being achieved.
Using e-learning to increase cost-effectiveness
To understand the rationale for this goal, it is necessary to look at the recent history of post-secondary education. It will be argued in this posting that universities and colleges have not changed their organizations and structures sufficiently to accommodate to the new realities facing higher education.
Information and communications technologies provide opportunities and potential for both improving the effectiveness, in terms of better qualified graduates and higher completion rates, and also for reducing unit costs, i.e. the cost of each graduating student. However, this cannot be done without major changes to post-secondary educational institutions.
In this posting, I will make the argument for radical change in the academy, in order to increase the cost-effectiveness of post-secondary education. In a second posting (Part 2), I will suggest some concrete ways in which cost-effectiveness could be improved.
The problem
Why do universities need to change? I think there are several compelling reasons.
From elite to mass higher education
Up until the middle of the 20th century, entrance to university in many countries was limited by and large to a small, elite minority of upper class or rich middle class students. As late as 1969, less than 8 per cent of 18 years olds (children born in 1951) were admitted to university in Britain (Perry, 1976). As a result, teaching methods in particular were suited to what today would be considered small classes, even at the undergraduate level, with seminar classes of 20 or less and even small group tutorials of three or four students with a senior research professor for students in their last year of an undergraduate program. This remains today the ‘ideal’ paradigm of university teaching for many professors and instructors.
In the USA and Canada, the move to a mass system of higher education began earlier, following the Second World War, when returning servicemen were given scholarships to attend university, and for the last half of the twentieth century, access to university and colleges was expanded rapidly. For a mix of social and economic reasons, from the 1960s onwards, governments in Europe also started again to expand rapidly the number of university places, so that by the end of the century, in many Western countries more than half the 19 year old cohort were admitted to some form of post-secondary education. (In 2006, 55% of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 34 had completed a post-secondary program of study – OECD, 2008.)
This represents a massive increase in numbers, and not surprisingly, governments, although spending ever more each year on post-secondary education, have not been able or willing to fund the staffing of universities and colleges at a level that would maintain the low class sizes common when access was limited. Thus in many North American universities, there are first and second year undergraduate courses with more than 1,000 students, taught mainly in large lecture classes, often by non-tenured instructors or even graduate students. However, at the same time, undergraduate completion rates (that is, the proportion of students who enter a four-year degree program who go on to complete the degree program within six years) remain below 60 per cent in the USA for many public universities (Bowen, McPherson, and Chingos, 2009). In other words, universities are failing a significant number of students each year.
With this widening of access to post-secondary education, the diversity of students has increased immensely. The biggest change is in the number of older and part-time students (including students who are technically classified as full-time, but who are in fact also holding down part-time jobs to pay for tuition fees, books, and living expenses). The mean age of students in North American post-secondary education institutions now stands at 24 years old, but the spread of ages is much wider, with many students taking longer than the minimum time to graduate, or returning to study after graduation for further qualifications. Many are married with young families. For such students, academic study is a relatively small component of an extremely busy life style. By definition, many of the students who now attend university or college are not in the top ten per cent of academic achievers, and therefore are likely to need more support and assistance with learning. With the growth of international students, and increasing numbers of students who are either recent immigrants themselves, or children of immigrants, there are now wider differences in language and culture, which also influence the context of teaching and learning.
Lastly, in most economically advanced countries, the unit costs of higher education have steadily increased year over year, without any sign of abating. Between 1995 to 2005, average tuition and fees rose 51 percent at public four-year institutions and 30 percent at community colleges in the USA (Wellman, 2009; Johnson, 2009). The average cost per student per year in tertiary education (excluding R&D costs) in the USA in 2006 was just over $22,000 per student (OECD, 2009, p. 202). Thus although there are now many more post-secondary students, the average cost per student continues to increase, putting excessive pressure on government funding, tuition fees, and hence costs to parents and students. More disturbingly, these increases in overall costs have not been matched by similar proportions of spending on direct teaching and learning activities (such as increasing the number of faculty). Most of the increased costs have gone into other areas, such as administration, fund raising, and campus facilities (Wellman, 2009). Thus post-secondary education has become larger, more costly, but less efficient.
The predominant teaching model
Yet despite the larger classes, and the increasing heterogeneity of the student body, the predominant organizational model of teaching is the same today as in the nineteenth century. It is no wonder then that unit costs are increasing. Modern universities and colleges still have many features of industrial organizations (Gilbert, 2005). For instance:
Program delivery
The ‘old’ university is built around the delivery of programs through campus ‘residence’, i.e. the physical attendance of students at lectures, seminars, libraries and labs. ICTs now though enable students to access information and services, including interaction with instructors and other students, at any time and any place. Programs can now be delivered in a variety of ways to an increasing wide variety of students, through face-to-face, blended or fully online learning.
Furthermore, instructors no longer have to create all their teaching material from scratch, and duplicate the process every year. They can increasing select ‘ready-made’ modules of free, open access online teaching materials, and organise teaching and learning around the vast resources now available over the Internet. Even better, as we shall see in the next section, they can give learners the freedom and responsibility to select the learning materials that they feel to be of interest and relevance.
Given the potential and benefits of digital learning, a radical re-thinking of the benefits and limitations of physical presence, related to the nature of the subject matter and the type of learner being targeted (e.g., high school leavers or lifelong learners, full-time or part-time students) is needed.
Teacher-centered teaching
The recent development of web 2.0 and mobile technology tools, such as blogs, YouTube, mobile phones and cameras, virtual worlds, and e-portfolios now enable learners to collect, create, transform, and adapt their own learning materials (Lee and McCoughlin, 2009). These tools can be used for collaborative learning, group work, projects, problem-solving, and creative thinking, all skills needed in a knowledge-based society.
These tools enable the role of the instructor to change from that of a provider and controller of knowledge, to one of facilitator and guide. Increased time spent by learners on active online tasks and peer collaboration is one way to deal with the massification of higher education, allowing for greater personalization of learning and increased motivation, while at the same time controlling the workload of the teacher. These tools allow work to be shifted from the teacher to the learner. Learners can spend more time on task, interacting both with digital content and with fellow students. However, for this approach to succeed, radical changes are needed to the standard mode of teaching.
Managing, administering and organizing the institution.
Universities and colleges are organized around the benefits and constraints of a physical campus. However information and communications technologies enable the institution to be managed, administered and organized quite differently. There are increasing moves to student self-service, through online admission, course registration, fee payment, and ordering and delivery of learning materials, not just to save money, but to provide more flexible and better service. Student, faculty and staff digital identities allow for single log-in and secure access to appropriate programs, services, and resources. New business intelligence tools allow for the distribution of information to faculty, staff and managers at all levels to better inform decision-making (Katz, 2008). Many universities and colleges are making moves in these directions, but they are more often piecemeal and uncoordinated, and are not driven by any new vision of the academy and how it should provide services.
The need for experimentation, innovation and vision
The challenge then is to square three competing factors: increasing access, increasing quality or improving outcomes, and reducing costs. Can technology provide the fourth side of the square?
Many universities and colleges will argue that they are experimenting, innovating and have vision with regard to the use of technology for teaching and administration, but what they are mainly doing is accommodating technology to the traditional model. Many professors and instructors are incorporating technology into their on-campus classroom teaching, and enrolments in fully online courses are growing rapidly. Nevertheless, both of these are a perpetuation of older models of teaching and learning.
Tierney and Hentschke (2007, pp. 13-14) argue that:
‘innovation in higher education has remained within a socially constructed framework where the innovators have tended to accept the parameters of traditional higher education and have worked within them…..As with all social constructions, deviations from these norms are relatively minor, in large part because those who participate in the construction have difficulties imagining ways much beyond the status quo….’
They argue that traditional universities and colleges seek ways to integrate new technology within the parameters of the traditional model, and look for changes at the margins, in a slow and incremental manner, that sustain the existing goals and values of the organization. Thus technology is being ‘accommodated’ to the prevailing model, not changing it.
What is lacking is a systematic, pedagogically-based approach that attempts to fit the design and delivery of courses and programs to the needs of an increasingly large and diverse student population. For instance, older, part-time workers are increasingly making up a large proportion of students, and this trend will increase further over the next ten years (see Hussar and Bailey, 2009). Many will not want to come on campus at all. But many professors see distance or adult students as ‘extra’ to normal teaching load. They already feel they have too many students to teach, and adding lifelong learners just makes matters worse.
I need not go into the argument made recently by Margaret Wente, a columnist in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, that professors have too light a teaching load (averaging around six hours a week). I happen to believe that the majority of university and college instructors (tenured or contracted) work very hard at teaching, when course and lesson preparation, student assessment, hiring and supervising adjunct faculty, and counselling students are all included. In research universities, teaching is supposed to count for no more than 40 per cent of their activities, and there are strong arguments to be made that good teaching and research reinforce each other in higher education. Time must be found for both. Thus professors are caught in a vicious cycle, and it is time to break out of that cycle. They do not need to work harder at teaching, but they do need to work smarter.
However, this cannot be done without major changes, without experimentation on a much larger scale than we have seen up to now – in other words, it cannot be done without disruption. Furthermore, these changes are needed, whether or not technology is the answer. So technology alone cannot improve cost-effectiveness; it needs to be linked to new visions for the university, to leadership, and to change management.
But I do believe technology can help, so in part 2 of this blog, to be posted in the next week or so, I will put forward some suggestions as to how technology could be used to increase the cost-effectiveness of universities and colleges. In the meantime, please use the comment box for your responses – or challenges – to this initial analysis.
References
Bowen, G., McPherson, M., and Chingos, M. (2009) Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities Princeton: Princeton University Press
Gilbert, J. (2005) Catching the Knowledge Wave: the Knowledge Society and the Future of Education Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Council for Educational Research
Hussar, W. and Bailey, T. (2009) Projections of education statistics to 2018 US Department of Education National Center for Educational Statistics: Washington DC
Johnson, N. (2009) What Does a College Degree Cost? Washington DC: Delta Cost Project
Katz, R. et al. (2008) The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing Boulder CO: EDUCAUSE
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2008 (Paris: 2008).
Perry, W. (1976) Open University Milton Keynes, UK: The Open University Press
Spellings, M. (2006) A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education Washington DC: US Department of Education
Tierney, W. and Hentschke, G. (2007) New Players, Different Game: Understanding the Rise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Wellman, J. et al. (2009) Trends in College Spending Washington DC: Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability
Recent Comments
Tony Bates on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Very nice story, Howard. Yes, I guess that sums up my law of equal substitution - it all depends on the...Howard Davis on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Hi Tony, not to muddle your observation about "high/low" emotional meetings since I agree with it, but I have direct...Tony Bates on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Good comments, Denise. I agree: I think 'non-academic' or non-content issues, such as availability of support, cost, student needs, and methods...Tony Bates on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Thanks for this comment, Howard. Your 'flipped' question is an interesting one. I think at an exploratory stage, for brainstorming, etc.,...Math Calculus on e-learning outlook for 2012: will it be a rough ride?
I think it will not be tough as long as the educators are going to do their bestDenise Nelson on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Hi Tony, Thanks for sharing your discussion of design models of hybrid/blended learning. Important considerations of whether the learning will take...Howard Davis on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Tony, just to flip your question a bit: how would your F2F workshop have differed if it had been held...Tony Bates on Discussing design models for hybrid/blended learning and the impact on the campus
Thanks for your very thoughtful comments, Mark. Your comments about different cultural backgrounds is very much on the ball. However, I...