Why universities should acquire – and teach – digital literacy

Students are digital natives. Photograph: Alamy

Sebastian Faulks observed recently that ease of access to the internet is leading to a "net loss of knowledge" in this generation of adults, leaving the modern intellectual world in a "kind of catastrophe". But is there another side to this gloomy story? Once time and brainpower are freed up from memorising, will other skills come into play, bringing hitherto unimagined benefits?

One such skill is broadly labelled digital literacy. The phrase is used to cover everything from grasping the basic functionality of a computer/tablet/smartphone, to mastering the sophisticated techniques and attitudes needed for online collaboration and communication through social media. Widely understood to be essential to success in the workplace and modern life, it is a subject that is beginning to emerge as key in the world of higher education.

Higher education usually happens at an intermediary stage between childhood and adulthood when students acquire some of the life skills that will be needed after graduation. Part of what a university can do is provide new graduates with the skills and knowledge to take them into the workplace.

Current undergraduates have never known a life without the internet – it is the glue that holds their personal and social lives together. It makes sense that universities should be nurturing students' familiarity with technology, encouraging its use in teaching and learning, and paying attention to developing broader digital literacy skills.

However sensible this might seem, the reality is somewhat different. Lecturers (who are powerful role models for students) can be very resistant to adopting new digital teaching practices, and will vary in their ability to engage with the online world. Few universities seem to have adopted a digital literacy agenda in a widespread or meaningful way.

While the use of online courses and e-books is growing in UK education, they are still a minority interest. Lectures are often delivered using traditional methods, with a great reliance on dead tree materials, and physical core textbooks continue to hold ground over digital versions.

Raised tuition fees may be the factor that forces change in the UK higher education sector. Universities, now competing more intensely with one another for the best students, are increasingly seeing their own technical preparedness as a differentiating factor, and some are offering technical enticements to prospective students – free devices or free e-books.

At the HE Academy annual conference in 2012, the vice-chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, reflected these sentiments in his keynote speech. He noted: "In an era of raised fees, when students need to see the value of their loans, we need to find ways to bring to life the magic of high quality teaching."

Once an institution buys into a digital or e-book platform for the delivery of core course materials, they begin to discover just how much it can help with teaching and learning. Interactive resources, audio and video can all be embedded into the e-textbook, bringing the materials to life and giving instant feedback.

Textbooks can be built in the university virtual learning environment, linking to online course materials already prepared for the student. In some cases, university administrators are able to use analytics to monitor overall usage and engagement with e-textbooks supplied to students.

Digital literacy starts with the mechanics of using digital resources and digital devices. It's through e-textbooks, library resources, online databases, or even the web that an expertise in searching, finding, critiquing, absorbing and referencing multiple sources is learned.

Students also find out how to handle information overload, shutting off distracting online sites long enough to focus on one piece of work that they need to get done on time.

Additional layers of digital know-how can to be added as the student moves to a deeper lever of expertise. With all the facts at their fingertips, students can learn to collaborate to add context and meaning to the facts, drawing analogies, preparing theories, and building conclusions. They can learn how to communicate and present their ideas expertly through social networks to colleagues and peers inside and outside their usual network. They can practise working with feedback, and conversing in an iterative loop.

Universities can do more to teach the basic digital literacy skills that students are seeking to prepare them for the workplace. They can recognise that digital literacy skills in their broadest definition will bring great benefits to students, to their eventual place of employment, and to their lifelong working and personal life.

Students, already expert users of technology, need direction to turn their technical skills into skills for learning and employability. They will recognise the value of an advanced digital literacy agenda provided by a university.

• Fionnuala Duggan is managing director for CourseSmart International, where she oversees its e-textbook platform and digital course material for international markets.

View the original article here

Top UK universities launch free online courses

Prof Martin Bean, vice chancellor of the Open University, which is funding FutureLearn. Photograph: Kelly Cooper

Eleven top UK universities are joining the Open University to launch free internet courses, in a bid to catch up with the elite US institutions that have led the way online.

King's College London, along with the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick have partnered with FutureLearn, a company set up by the Open University that will offer free, non-credit bearing courses to internet-users around the world.

The courses are modelled on the US phenomenon 'massive open online courses' (Moocs), which have attracted millions of users across the globe, and are especially popular in emerging economies – a key market place for UK universities.

FutureLearn will promote UK institutions to international students, said Prof Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of the Open University.

"At the moment foreign students' perception of UK universities is: wonderful history, great tradition, really good teaching, but a bit boring.

"It's absolutely unacceptable that the number one or two brand for higher education in the world should be lagging in the areas of innovation in terms of HE. We need to inject that front-foot, innovative flavour if we're to compete with the US."

Universities minister David Willetts said the partnership – which has received cross-party support and involves universities from Scotland, Wales and England – will put the UK at the heart of online education.

"Massive open online courses present an opportunity for us to widen access to, and meet the global demand for higher education. This is growing rapidly in emerging economies like Brazil, India and China."

The UK higher education industry, which is worth £14 billion, stands in the top five export earners for Britain.

Moocs have grown rapidly in the US over the past year, with two providers leading the field. Coursera offers courses from 33 universities, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke and has reached more than 1.7 million users.

EdX, a nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students enrolled on online courses this autumn.

Simon Nelson, one of the key architects of BBC Online, will head FutureLearn as launch CEO. He says that the company will focus on providing quality education rather than targeting large numbers but expects it may attract millions.

"It's a really enlightening move for these universities to come together – we'll punch so much harder collectively than any other university would individually."

Partner institutions will be responsible for their own content while the OU, which has been providing distance learning courses since 1971, will assist with course delivery and infrastructure.

While the courses are not meant to rival traditional degrees, Prof Bean hopes the partnership will help democratise education.

"This is also about unlocking institutions to citizens in the UK as well as abroad. There will be people who want to use it for employment outcomes, and we contemplate users will be abe to do a formal inviligated exam if they want to show they were tested to a higher standard of rigour."

A charge for (optional) certificates and exam inviligation will form the company's primary revenue stream. The Open University is the company's only shareholder, though it is not expecting big profits, says Prof Bean.

Details of further universities who may sign up to the deal will be revealed in the new year, as will the courses on offer. "People are really interested in breadth," says Prof Bean. "FutureLearn will roam the tapestry of HE and not be bound to any particular discipline. But ultimately the crowd will decide."

Leighton Andrews, Welsh minister for education and skills has welcomed the partnership, saying: "I have encouraged the higher education sector in Wales as a whole to engage with this is a serious way. The area of open education resources is a fast-moving field in which the power of the internet and information technology can transform access to learning globally."

Leeds University say the partnership will also benefit students studying on campus: "And our current students will have access to a rich, interactive set of resources, from both Leeds and our partners. In line with the Leeds Curriculum, this will help give them a deeper and fuller understanding of their field of study as well as encouraging them to broaden their education beyond their main subject areas."

View the original article here

Why universities should acquire – and teach – digital literacy

 Students are digital natives. Photograph: Alamy

Sebastian Faulks observed recently that ease of access to the internet is leading to a "net loss of knowledge" in this generation of adults, leaving the modern intellectual world in a "kind of catastrophe". But is there another side to this gloomy story? Once time and brainpower are freed up from memorising, will other skills come into play, bringing hitherto unimagined benefits?

One such skill is broadly labelled digital literacy. The phrase is used to cover everything from grasping the basic functionality of a computer/tablet/smartphone, to mastering the sophisticated techniques and attitudes needed for online collaboration and communication through social media. Widely understood to be essential to success in the workplace and modern life, it is a subject that is beginning to emerge as key in the world of higher education.

Higher education usually happens at an intermediary stage between childhood and adulthood when students acquire some of the life skills that will be needed after graduation. Part of what a university can do is provide new graduates with the skills and knowledge to take them into the workplace.

Current undergraduates have never known a life without the internet – it is the glue that holds their personal and social lives together. It makes sense that universities should be nurturing students' familiarity with technology, encouraging its use in teaching and learning, and paying attention to developing broader digital literacy skills.

However sensible this might seem, the reality is somewhat different. Lecturers (who are powerful role models for students) can be very resistant to adopting new digital teaching practices, and will vary in their ability to engage with the online world. Few universities seem to have adopted a digital literacy agenda in a widespread or meaningful way.

While the use of online courses and e-books is growing in UK education, they are still a minority interest. Lectures are often delivered using traditional methods, with a great reliance on dead tree materials, and physical core textbooks continue to hold ground over digital versions.

Raised tuition fees may be the factor that forces change in the UK higher education sector. Universities, now competing more intensely with one another for the best students, are increasingly seeing their own technical preparedness as a differentiating factor, and some are offering technical enticements to prospective students – free devices or free e-books.

At the HE Academy annual conference in 2012, the vice-chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, reflected these sentiments in his keynote speech. He noted: "In an era of raised fees, when students need to see the value of their loans, we need to find ways to bring to life the magic of high quality teaching."

Once an institution buys into a digital or e-book platform for the delivery of core course materials, they begin to discover just how much it can help with teaching and learning. Interactive resources, audio and video can all be embedded into the e-textbook, bringing the materials to life and giving instant feedback.

Textbooks can be built in the university virtual learning environment, linking to online course materials already prepared for the student. In some cases, university administrators are able to use analytics to monitor overall usage and engagement with e-textbooks supplied to students.

Digital literacy starts with the mechanics of using digital resources and digital devices. It's through e-textbooks, library resources, online databases, or even the web that an expertise in searching, finding, critiquing, absorbing and referencing multiple sources is learned.

Students also find out how to handle information overload, shutting off distracting online sites long enough to focus on one piece of work that they need to get done on time.

Additional layers of digital know-how can to be added as the student moves to a deeper lever of expertise. With all the facts at their fingertips, students can learn to collaborate to add context and meaning to the facts, drawing analogies, preparing theories, and building conclusions. They can learn how to communicate and present their ideas expertly through social networks to colleagues and peers inside and outside their usual network. They can practise working with feedback, and conversing in an iterative loop.

Universities can do more to teach the basic digital literacy skills that students are seeking to prepare them for the workplace. They can recognise that digital literacy skills in their broadest definition will bring great benefits to students, to their eventual place of employment, and to their lifelong working and personal life.

Students, already expert users of technology, need direction to turn their technical skills into skills for learning and employability. They will recognise the value of an advanced digital literacy agenda provided by a university.

• Fionnuala Duggan is managing director for CourseSmart International, where she oversees its e-textbook platform and digital course material for international markets.

View the original article here

Top UK universities launch free online courses

Prof Martin Bean, vice chancellor of the Open University, which is funding FutureLearn. Photograph: Kelly Cooper

Eleven top UK universities are joining the Open University to launch free internet courses, in a bid to catch up with the elite US institutions that have led the way online.

King's College London, along with the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick have partnered with FutureLearn, a company set up by the Open University that will offer free, non-credit bearing courses to internet-users around the world.

The courses are modelled on the US phenomenon 'massive open online courses' (Moocs), which have attracted millions of users across the globe, and are especially popular in emerging economies – a key market place for UK universities.

FutureLearn will promote UK institutions to international students, said Prof Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of the Open University.

"At the moment foreign students' perception of UK universities is: wonderful history, great tradition, really good teaching, but a bit boring.

"It's absolutely unacceptable that the number one or two brand for higher education in the world should be lagging in the areas of innovation in terms of HE. We need to inject that front-foot, innovative flavour if we're to compete with the US."

Universities minister David Willetts said the partnership – which has received cross-party support and involves universities from Scotland, Wales and England – will put the UK at the heart of online education.

"Massive open online courses present an opportunity for us to widen access to, and meet the global demand for higher education. This is growing rapidly in emerging economies like Brazil, India and China."

The UK higher education industry, which is worth £14 billion, stands in the top five export earners for Britain.

Moocs have grown rapidly in the US over the past year, with two providers leading the field. Coursera offers courses from 33 universities, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke and has reached more than 1.7 million users.

EdX, a nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students enrolled on online courses this autumn.

Simon Nelson, one of the key architects of BBC Online, will head FutureLearn as launch CEO. He says that the company will focus on providing quality education rather than targeting large numbers but expects it may attract millions.

"It's a really enlightening move for these universities to come together – we'll punch so much harder collectively than any other university would individually."

Partner institutions will be responsible for their own content while the OU, which has been providing distance learning courses since 1971, will assist with course delivery and infrastructure.

While the courses are not meant to rival traditional degrees, Prof Bean hopes the partnership will help democratise education.

"This is also about unlocking institutions to citizens in the UK as well as abroad. There will be people who want to use it for employment outcomes, and we contemplate users will be abe to do a formal inviligated exam if they want to show they were tested to a higher standard of rigour."

A charge for (optional) certificates and exam inviligation will form the company's primary revenue stream. The Open University is the company's only shareholder, though it is not expecting big profits, says Prof Bean.

Details of further universities who may sign up to the deal will be revealed in the new year, as will the courses on offer. "People are really interested in breadth," says Prof Bean. "FutureLearn will roam the tapestry of HE and not be bound to any particular discipline. But ultimately the crowd will decide."

Leighton Andrews, Welsh minister for education and skills has welcomed the partnership, saying: "I have encouraged the higher education sector in Wales as a whole to engage with this is a serious way. The area of open education resources is a fast-moving field in which the power of the internet and information technology can transform access to learning globally."

Leeds University say the partnership will also benefit students studying on campus: "And our current students will have access to a rich, interactive set of resources, from both Leeds and our partners. In line with the Leeds Curriculum, this will help give them a deeper and fuller understanding of their field of study as well as encouraging them to broaden their education beyond their main subject areas."

View the original article here

UK universities are wary of getting on board the mooc train

Prof Martin Bean, vice chancellor of the Open University, which has led the way in online learning. Photograph: Kelly Cooper

About once a fortnight Matt Robb, senior principal at consulting firm Parthenon, has a conversation with a financier who wants to inject serious finance into a British university. According to Robb, the right idea could net finance of between £50m and £100m. Yet this isn't about new lecture halls or research facilities. Financiers are hearing stories about a global revolution in online learning in the US, and they are eager for that revolution to catch on over here. But so far they have been disappointed. "UK higher education is extremely good, but the scale of ambition is low," says Robb. "I was talking to an investor the other day who said: 'At the moment no university is looking at anything big enough for us to write a cheque'."

In the UK, distance learning remains a niche concern – something that is seen as more the territory of the Open University than the mainstream. Universities say they've been offering their learners online options for years. But there is scarcely a whiff of the evangelism and excitement bubbling away in America, where venture capitalists and leading universities are ploughing millions of dollars into mould-breaking massive online open courses, or moocs, which offer free education to huge numbers of students across the world.

Though the technology has been around for some time, the mooc legend really began last year when a Stanford University professor, Sebastian Thrun, experimented with offering an artificial intelligence course free online. In just a few weeks, 160,000 students from 190 countries had raced to sign up. Thrun's days of teaching 200 students in a lecture hall are now over. He has launched Udacity, which aims to "democratise education" by offering free, bitesize courses, ranging from starting a business to software debugging, taught by leading academics, to up to 200,000 students at a time.

Udacity joins other big American mooc players including edX, a combined venture from Harvard, MIT and more recently Berkeley; and Coursera, a second venture from Stanford. More than 30 elite universities from around the world now offer free courses as part of the Coursera platform, including Edinburgh and the University of London. Both British universities see this as a chance to dip their toes into uncharted seas with little personal risk.

But their decision to do so is controversial. The blogosphere is alive with warnings about moocs, and many commentators are speculating that universities are opening the floodgates to something that will cannibalise traditional higher education. The fear is: if students can learn in their pyjamas with academic stars for nothing, why would they pay fees of £9,000 a year for a normal university course?

Prof Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of the Open University, describes this as the "Napster moment for higher education", and many experts agree. The advent of Napster – which allowed fans to share music for free online – upended the traditional business model for the music industry forever. Although the Open University already offers free tasters of its education via YouTube and iTunes, and plans to do more online, Bean warns that universities that rush into moocs are "irresponsible".

Prof Sir Adrian Smith, the new vice-chancellor of the University of London, is pragmatic. "A lot of individuals might have a first reaction that this is a threat, but you can't hold back the tide. This is a big wave and you have to work out how to surf it rather than drown under it."

And it seems talk of big waves is not mere hyperbole. Within 24 hours of going live with Coursera in September, 9,000 students had signed up to the university's five free courses, and that figure has now hit 60,000.

But for now, moocs are still a work in progress. While student numbers are potentially massive, it is not yet clear how these sites will make money. As Peter Reed, e-learning co-ordinator at Manchester Metropolitan University, says: "Undoubtedly, the opening up of education – and in many cases from world leaders – is a great thing, but I'm not sure if moocs have really got their business plan sorted out."

For now at least, moocs are missing two major things. The first is that students do not walk away with an internationally recognised paper qualification.

Second, they cannot offer the same level of personal support as a traditional university. Although moocs operate through online forums and communities, and some students have already arranged to meet and study together, many academics argue that this is no substitute for intensive tutor support.

Edinburgh was already offering some of its professional master's courses such as law and veterinary medicine entirely online when it joined Coursera – it aims to have 10,000 fee-paying students online in the next few years. Prof Jeff Haywood, vice-principal for knowledge management at the university, explains that their free "taster" courses on Coursera are very different: "We don't select any of the learners, and we don't teach them. We design a course and monitor and lightly support them. Instead of a staff ratio of one to 20 on our standard online courses, it might be one to 20,000."

Some universities argue that while the mooc model remains imperfect, it doesn't make sense to take the reputational risk of getting involved.

Smith adds that universities are never going to be at their most innovative at a time of huge policy change. "Institutions and individuals only have a finite amount of energy and with the volatilities of recent years people are taking stock, stacking up their cash balances," he says.

The danger is that if there is a global online revolution, it may not wait for Britain. "I don't think investors are misunderstanding the market," Haywood says. "One question is, do you just get one splash at this, with Udacity and Coursera et al? Have they got the first movers' advantage and now it's gone? Or will all this disappear in three years' time? We just don't know."

View the original article here

Top universities join free online teaching platform

Coursera and similar online offerings could mean the end of large lecture theatres as universities put more emphasis on one-to-one teaching. Photograph: Image Source /Rex Features

Twelve leading universities in the US and Europe have joined an internet platform created by two Stanford University scientists which provides free online access to classes designed by academics at elite institutions.

The move, announced on Tuesday, marks a significant expansion of online university teaching. Observers say it heralds a shakeup of the classic lecture theatre model.

The new participants in Coursera, which combines online lectures with assignments to be submitted, include the California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, San Francisco in the US, as well as Edinburgh University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne.

Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania have also announced a combined $3.7m (£2.4m) investment in Coursera.

Coursera already offers classes from Princeton, the University of Michigan, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.

The 12 universities joining the platform will offer dozens of new courses in the arts, computer science, health, mathematics, history, literature and other disciplines.

The classes offered by Coursera do not count as credit towards degrees at the universities involved, but online students receive certificates for completing their studies.

Andrew Ng, the Stanford academic who co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, said the move gave students "greater access than ever before to the world's foremost subject-matter experts".

Koller said: "We're fortunate to have the support of these highly respected academic institutions as we move toward our shared goal of providing a high-quality education to everyone around the world."

Many universities already offer online lectures and some – notably the Open University – offer qualifications through distance learning. But observers say the rise of Coursera and similar online offerings marks a shift in the balance of power in higher education.

Mike Boxall, of the management consultancy PA Consulting, compared the development to the changes that have swept the media and music industry. "The interesting thing is that it effectively marks the provision of knowledge as a free good, which accords with young people's expectations. Now you've got the industry saying, we have to protect our offer – that offer is not the key to the library door – they have to provide something around that, the ability to use and interact with that knowledge."

The growth in online learning is likely to push universities towards greater emphasis on one-to-one tuition and other interaction with students, Boxall said. "What does that mean for 500-seat lecture theatres? It's amazing that universities are still building big lecture theatres – there's a huge wave of building across the university world. They're not rethinking that environment."

It is also a sign of the untapped demand for higher education. In recent years, there has been keen interest from venture capital in private for-profit higher education providers.

A consortium including Goldman Sachs owns the US private HE provider Education Management Corporation, while Montagu private equity recently acquired the College of Law, the UK's biggest law school, for £200m.

Boxall said: "There is huge latent demand. Public higher education is under pressure but the bigger market for learning is just vast."

Coursera's business model has not been made public, but learners pay for the certificates that mark completion of their courses – a revenue stream shared with the universities. One investor has suggested the business could profit from students opting in to premium services.

Jeff Haywood, vice-principal at Edinburgh University, said his institution was adopting a breakeven model. The platform serves as a shop window for universities; a free course with no entry qualifications offers students a way of sampling a traditional university education. It also offers the universities a chance to innovate, Haywood said. "There's an ability to experiment at a scale that we can't do on campus – you can't put together a class of 20,000 students on campus. If we're able to get some confidence that we can do automated large-scale assessment, on computers, we may do more of that and release our academic team to do higher value-added teaching."

An internet-based model which can pick the best courses from around the world puts greater pressure on universities to be distinctive; one of the courses Edinburgh will offer is in artificial intelligence, for which it has an international reputation.

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents leading universities including Oxbridge and Edinburgh, said: "Online technologies provide huge opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, and our universities are continuing to take advantage by, for example, putting lectures online through iTunes U and YouTube, or by making much of our research open access. Russell Group universities have always been at the forefront of online innovations, and we are keen to exploit this further."

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Open for business? Why universities must collaborate on OpenCourseWare

Is the knowledge monopoly for higher education institutions ending? Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Leading higher education specialists from across the world convened at Cambridge University in April for a landmark global conference on the future of online learning. The contrast here between the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the new, reflects the challenges of standardising the digital learning revolution across higher education globally.

The Cambridge conference was hosted by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, a non-profit consortium, which is now the largest open online education resource in the world. OCWC comprises some 280 higher education institutions, offers around 21,000 courses online, and has many millions of learners across the globe.

The ambition of open online learning is to cut cost and eliminate geographic distance as obstacles to the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Unlike traditional e-learning, OpenCourseWare (OCW) offers all course materials free to everyone with online access. The logic follows that educators from around the world can upgrade their OCW classes; students can enhance their OCW coursework or pursue self-study; and – for the first time ever – the general public is given a window through which to see the depth and breadth of what leading universities are offering and to benefit from reading lists and lectures.

The potential benefits of open online learning are tremendous. However, in order for it to truly deliver a global knowledge revolution, the higher education sector must collaborate more effectively to enhance the impact of online education resources.

One key sticking point is that traditional institutions have previously enjoyed a knowledge monopoly in higher education. However, in the digital age, knowledge is instantly accessible, and universities and colleges must now actively share their role for developing and spreading knowledge with many other institutions and indeed individuals that require enhanced collaboration.

Concern exists among some higher education institutions that by releasing knowledge into the public domain, they will increasingly become little more than certification factories, with no clear role as the arbiters and producers of knowledge. The worry is that students will study online for free, after which they will shop around for higher education institutions that are willing to test to a given standard and – if they pass – provide them with an appropriate qualification. This point was also discussed in Cambridge last week.

This shouldn't be a threat to higher education institutions, especially given the ambition in Europe, and indeed much of the rest of world, to dramatically increase the percentage of the population with a tertiary education. Online learning offers the opportunity to teach many more students than we do now: a higher education institution could potentially have 1 million students, including lifelong learners who find it difficult to take part in on-campus courses.

The business model for higher education institutions would be different, of course, forcing them to change from a system of tuition fees to one of course-completion or certification fees. However, as long as they have a thorough system of testing and provide high-reputation certified qualifications, offering online learning might even be an advantage, allowing more time for other institutional work, such as research.

For some, the real danger is if higher education institutions lose their monopoly on certification. The answer here must be to enhance the quality and reputation of our institutions.

Students generally attend an institution not only because they want to learn something, but also because a qualification helps them with their future career. The greater the reputation of the certifying institution, the more valuable the diplomas, certificates and degrees will be.

People may well be less willing to pay for tuition at an institution with a poor reputation, preferring to attend a free, virtual one. They will continue to pay, however, for a qualification from high-quality institutions such as Cambridge. These diplomas, certificates and degrees are reliable proof of what they have learned and at what level, providing a valuable ticket for a future career.

In general, the higher education sector has little reason to view the digital learning revolution as a threat and should embrace the massive opportunity it presents through more active participation and collaboration. Online education can not only help provide higher education institutions with increasing numbers of students, but also new potential revenue streams, whilst embedding their reputation for high quality knowledge and teaching in the digital age.

• Student numbers in higher education make open education inevitable

The world's higher education system must accommodate nearly 80 million more students by 2025. Sir John Daniel (Common Wealth of Learning) calculated that this would require building three campuses for 30,000 students every week for the next 13 years. Since this is unlikely to happen, other ways to provide education have to be found.

• What is a sustainable model for open education?

Various models are being tested now. Some of these are based purely on volunteers, such P2PU (Peer to Peer University); most focus on combining the existing higher education structure and open education (such as MITx, Open University UK or Delft University of Technology)

• Government interest in open education is growing: In 2011, the US started a four-year programme involving a total of $2bn, which includes development of open educational resources (OER) for community colleges. Many other countries, such as India, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have introduced specific measures or subsidies to promote OER. Unesco is pushing this by encouraging governments to sign the Paris declaration on OER next June.

• And has to grow further!

Open education can help governments deal with a number of challenges in higher education, such as bridging the gap between secondary and higher education, reaching life long learners, globalisation, competition for talent and financing the increasing number of students.

Anka Mulder is secretary general of Delft University of Technology and global president of OpenCourseWare Consortium

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Universities leading the way with education technology

"The future is all around yet many of us in universities have our eyes wide shut." Photograph: Images.com/Corbis

Georgia Institute for Technology's Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is a self-described living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. Its mission: to foster and accelerate the innovation, validation, adoption and deployment of disruptive ideas-particularly those involving technology in the service of teaching and learning, industry wide.

Accelerate is just the right word. When it comes to change, we are reaching warp speed.

Sebastian Thrun's Udacity courses in building a search engine and programming a robotic car have attracted thousands (including me). Apart from teaching, Thrun has set himself the goal of democratising education; education should be free. Accessible for all, everywhere, and any time.

While I have your attention, drop in to the Khan Academy which, with a library of more than 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 315 practice exercises, you will find that it too is on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

For another glimpse of the future pop in to MITx where 90,000 people are studying 6.002x (circuits and electronics), and which has set itself the modest goal of organising and presenting course material to enable students to learn worldwide.

Writing for The Guardian's Higher Education Network, Matthew Draycott declared himself surprised that the impact of "disruptive technological methodologies" was not top of mind in UK higher education circles.

He is right to be surprised. I am surprised that he is not thoroughly gobsmacked. The future is all around yet many of us in universities have our eyes wide shut.

There is no need to go all apocalyptic over the technological 'disruption'. Bricks and mortar universities (particularly those made of very old bricks and ancient mortar) are not about to disappear.

But if they don't 'do something' then their hallowed halls (and their mischievous postmodern equivalents) will in some distant time reverberate to the sound of a melancholy, long, withdrawing roar (to borrow Matthew Arnold's peerless phrase) as many students leave to seek alternative forms of higher education.

And what will be the hallmark of these alternatives (or perhaps replacements)?

They will put students front and centre of all they do. Agrarian-legacy lengthy holidays will end and teaching will take place year round to cater to the increasingly busy lives of students. They will be able to study any time, night or day.

Students will study what they want to study, not what academics wish to teach.

Technology will be tailored to students' needs. Online offerings will be as familiar as YouTube, but they won't merely be images from a camera plonked in front of a traditional class with a traditional lecturer fumbling with a traditional Power Point presentation. They will be bespoke, well made, smartly edited videos or other visual presentations designed with the student in mind.

Universities will increasingly share resources with other universities – perhaps students at University A will study electronics by video from University B, which specialises in the field; while students at University A will study, say, ancient history presented by the specialists at University B.

These are just some ideas. What else do we need to do to adapt to the future that's already arrived?

Steven Schwartz is vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia

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Top universities join free online teaching platform

Coursera and similar online offerings could mean the end of large lecture theatres as universities put more emphasis on one-to-one teaching. Photograph: Image Source /Rex Features

Twelve leading universities in the US and Europe have joined an internet platform created by two Stanford University scientists which provides free online access to classes designed by academics at elite institutions.

The move, announced on Tuesday, marks a significant expansion of online university teaching. Observers say it heralds a shakeup of the classic lecture theatre model.

The new participants in Coursera, which combines online lectures with assignments to be submitted, include the California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, San Francisco in the US, as well as Edinburgh University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne.

Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania have also announced a combined $3.7m (£2.4m) investment in Coursera.

Coursera already offers classes from Princeton, the University of Michigan, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.

The 12 universities joining the platform will offer dozens of new courses in the arts, computer science, health, mathematics, history, literature and other disciplines.

The classes offered by Coursera do not count as credit towards degrees at the universities involved, but online students receive certificates for completing their studies.

Andrew Ng, the Stanford academic who co-founded Coursera with Daphne Koller, said the move gave students "greater access than ever before to the world's foremost subject-matter experts".

Koller said: "We're fortunate to have the support of these highly respected academic institutions as we move toward our shared goal of providing a high-quality education to everyone around the world."

Many universities already offer online lectures and some – notably the Open University – offer qualifications through distance learning. But observers say the rise of Coursera and similar online offerings marks a shift in the balance of power in higher education.

Mike Boxall, of the management consultancy PA Consulting, compared the development to the changes that have swept the media and music industry. "The interesting thing is that it effectively marks the provision of knowledge as a free good, which accords with young people's expectations. Now you've got the industry saying, we have to protect our offer – that offer is not the key to the library door – they have to provide something around that, the ability to use and interact with that knowledge."

The growth in online learning is likely to push universities towards greater emphasis on one-to-one tuition and other interaction with students, Boxall said. "What does that mean for 500-seat lecture theatres? It's amazing that universities are still building big lecture theatres – there's a huge wave of building across the university world. They're not rethinking that environment."

It is also a sign of the untapped demand for higher education. In recent years, there has been keen interest from venture capital in private for-profit higher education providers.

A consortium including Goldman Sachs owns the US private HE provider Education Management Corporation, while Montagu private equity recently acquired the College of Law, the UK's biggest law school, for £200m.

Boxall said: "There is huge latent demand. Public higher education is under pressure but the bigger market for learning is just vast."

Coursera's business model has not been made public, but learners pay for the certificates that mark completion of their courses – a revenue stream shared with the universities. One investor has suggested the business could profit from students opting in to premium services.

Jeff Haywood, vice-principal at Edinburgh University, said his institution was adopting a breakeven model. The platform serves as a shop window for universities; a free course with no entry qualifications offers students a way of sampling a traditional university education. It also offers the universities a chance to innovate, Haywood said. "There's an ability to experiment at a scale that we can't do on campus – you can't put together a class of 20,000 students on campus. If we're able to get some confidence that we can do automated large-scale assessment, on computers, we may do more of that and release our academic team to do higher value-added teaching."

An internet-based model which can pick the best courses from around the world puts greater pressure on universities to be distinctive; one of the courses Edinburgh will offer is in artificial intelligence, for which it has an international reputation.

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents leading universities including Oxbridge and Edinburgh, said: "Online technologies provide huge opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge, and our universities are continuing to take advantage by, for example, putting lectures online through iTunes U and YouTube, or by making much of our research open access. Russell Group universities have always been at the forefront of online innovations, and we are keen to exploit this further."

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Universities leading the way with education technology

"The future is all around yet many of us in universities have our eyes wide shut." Photograph: Images.com/Corbis

Georgia Institute for Technology's Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is a self-described living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. Its mission: to foster and accelerate the innovation, validation, adoption and deployment of disruptive ideas-particularly those involving technology in the service of teaching and learning, industry wide.

Accelerate is just the right word. When it comes to change, we are reaching warp speed.

Sebastian Thrun's Udacity courses in building a search engine and programming a robotic car have attracted thousands (including me). Apart from teaching, Thrun has set himself the goal of democratising education; education should be free. Accessible for all, everywhere, and any time.

While I have your attention, drop in to the Khan Academy which, with a library of more than 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 315 practice exercises, you will find that it too is on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

For another glimpse of the future pop in to MITx where 90,000 people are studying 6.002x (circuits and electronics), and which has set itself the modest goal of organising and presenting course material to enable students to learn worldwide.

Writing for The Guardian's Higher Education Network, Matthew Draycott declared himself surprised that the impact of "disruptive technological methodologies" was not top of mind in UK higher education circles.

He is right to be surprised. I am surprised that he is not thoroughly gobsmacked. The future is all around yet many of us in universities have our eyes wide shut.

There is no need to go all apocalyptic over the technological 'disruption'. Bricks and mortar universities (particularly those made of very old bricks and ancient mortar) are not about to disappear.

But if they don't 'do something' then their hallowed halls (and their mischievous postmodern equivalents) will in some distant time reverberate to the sound of a melancholy, long, withdrawing roar (to borrow Matthew Arnold's peerless phrase) as many students leave to seek alternative forms of higher education.

And what will be the hallmark of these alternatives (or perhaps replacements)?

They will put students front and centre of all they do. Agrarian-legacy lengthy holidays will end and teaching will take place year round to cater to the increasingly busy lives of students. They will be able to study any time, night or day.

Students will study what they want to study, not what academics wish to teach.

Technology will be tailored to students' needs. Online offerings will be as familiar as YouTube, but they won't merely be images from a camera plonked in front of a traditional class with a traditional lecturer fumbling with a traditional Power Point presentation. They will be bespoke, well made, smartly edited videos or other visual presentations designed with the student in mind.

Universities will increasingly share resources with other universities – perhaps students at University A will study electronics by video from University B, which specialises in the field; while students at University A will study, say, ancient history presented by the specialists at University B.

These are just some ideas. What else do we need to do to adapt to the future that's already arrived?

Steven Schwartz is vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up for free to become a member of the Higher Education Network.

View the original article here