Why the Georgia Tech-Udacity tie up is a big deal

When the news broke last week that Georgia Tech had reached an agreement with Udacity and AT&T to offer a Master of Science degree in computer science for just USD7000, this must have sent shivers down the spines of university Vice-Chancellors and Presidents all around the world.

If it did not, it should of done. Currently ranked 24th in the world for computer science, Georgia Institute of Technology is certainly no slouch. Throw a Fortune 500 company like AT&T into the mix, and the hip, new delivery platform provided by Udacity and you have a potent combination.

George Siemens (@gsiemens) simply tweeted: ‘OK, this is significant’ with a link to the Udacity blog and Sebastian Thrun’s statement about the deal. It is significant if Siemens says its significant given he was one of the architects of the original MOOC concept back in 2008, albeit when it was a very different beast to the one today. Siemens and his collaborators (the so-called cMOOC group) are critical of the private equity led xMOOC model because of its behaviourist — as opposed to connectivist — educational philosophy. I happen to agree with these criticisms but this is of little relevance right now, given this latest development, because the academic debate about the merits of one learning theory or another take second place to economics and what consumers of higher education perceive to be value for money. In terms of the chart above (courtesy of Phil Hill), it seems at least two of the problems faced by the xMOOCS have just been fixed; viz. credentialing and a revenue stream.

So now we have a MOC. It’s a massive course, and it’s online, but it’s not open — at least not if you want the credential of a Georgia Tech degree. The reason this is such a big deal is that — putting the pedagogical debate to one side — given the awarding body is a globally highly ranked university, the rational consumer sees value for money;  i.e. high quality at a lower cost. The potential impact on universities offering traditional masters degrees in computer science is huge.

The first xMOOC was a computer science course, and since then, just about every discipline has been ‘MOOCified’ in some shape or form. I would anticipate that it will not be too long before a top ranking business school partners with one of the private MOOC providers and offers an MBA for a similar price.

The business models of universities must change and change fast if they are to withstand this upheaval.

How to promote digital literacies among faculty

In the recently published NMC Horizon Project Regional Analysis, Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education 2013-18, it stated (p.3) that (shock, horror) there is a need for more faculty training to improve digital media literacy ‘before being asked to teach, and for more professional development opportunities once in the profession’. More significantly, though, the report points out that:

While a lack of adequate training opportunities is a part of the challenge, ultimately a change in the mind sets of disciplines and individual faculty will be required, along with cultural shifts within institutions, before emerging tools and technologies are routinely adopted and implemented as a matter of course.

One way of changing mindsets is for academics to to find some intrinsic motivation to leverage these emerging technologies. As Belshaw argues (slide 28), the trick is to identify an area where important issues overlap with personal interest. In other words, academics will upskill because they want to rather than because they have to. In these circumstances, the efficacy of preservice training/ professional development is likely to be enhanced.

Only after faculty have become au fait with the digital literacies (slides 24-27) and what they bring to their own personal learning environment (PLE), will they be able to respond to the increasing demand for personalised learning from their students. As the Horizon report notes (p.4):

More than ever, students are using ICT and new always-connected mobiles outside of the classroom to explore subjects that personally interest them. Institutions need to leverage and promote these informal learning experiences while integrating them with on-campus learning.

This is why it is important for institutional learning management systems (LMSs) to become more open and accommodate the PLEs of learners (slide 61).

 

The Digitally Connected Worker

Why MOOCs matter

Amid all the hoo-har about MOOCs and the will-they won’t-they debate over their impact on university business models, a piece by Tom Friedman caught my eye the other day on the rise of the ‘celebrity professor’. The stimulus for the Friedman article was a conference he attended last week hosted by Harvard University and MIT where academics and administrators from these two elite US universities discussed the rise of online courses and the ramifications for residential colleges and universities. One outcome, as Inside Higher Ed reports, is that MOOCs are certainly prompting some faculty to pay more attention to their teaching styles than they ever have before.

Friedman notes that not every academic is likely to generate a rock-star following following their entry into MOOCdom, but he issues a grave warning to the rest us mere mortal when he states:

‘The world of MOOCs is creating a competition that will force every professor to improve his or her pedagogy or face an online competitor … When outstanding becomes so easily available, average is over.’

This is why MOOCs matter. I presented at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and I was asked for my advice by a member of the audience on how she might go about dealing with a group of recalcitrant academics in her department who are steadfastly refusing to do anything online. My response was that, pretty soon, it may not be a decision that they get to make. As Friedman notes in his article, Harvard Business School no longer teaches entry-level accounting because there is a professor at Brigham Young University whose online accounting course is so good that Harvard students use that instead.

Mainstreaming the disruption

This slide deck I presented at a senior leadership conference at Griffith University last week.

The essence of my argument is that the higher education sector is entering a perfect storm with the problems of student indebtedness, budget deficits and graduate unemployment looming large, combining with the disruptive innovation from the non-university private sector providing what appear to be viable alternatives to a traditional university education.

The solution, I believe, is to ‘mainstream the disruption’. To sit back and continue with business as usual would be a courageous decision (to borrow from Sir Humphrey Appleby).