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

Are Digital Textbooks Right For the Next School Year?

One of the biggest changes in EdTech is the trend around turning printed textbooks into digital files. On the face of it, the benefits of going digital are hard to ignore. There is greater currency, a single common version for all students, and the elimination of the physical tracking, storage, and management of printed textbooks. Yet, for all the benefits, there are still issues to consider. There are still cost issues, the availability of some texts, and other things to consider.

In this blog we’ll look at some of the key issues and announcements that are going to impact your decision. Each district has their issues and demands that will impact the digital textbook decision. Making the right call is essential.

Of course, one of the most important gating factors to the success of digital textbooks is the decision by the largest suppliers of textbooks to support the initiative. According to EdWeek, the “Big 3” textbook manufacturers (Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) are taking different approaches making things more complex. Pearson is delivering a technology platform. HMH is looking to create “bite size” content, eschewing the direct digital to printed textbook model. McGraw-Hill is treading a middle ground, believing that not all districts are ready to go digital, and that the next few years are going to stay “blended” in terms of digital and print offerings.

So at best, we’re looking at a start. It is somewhat disappointing that rather than lead the charge, book publishers are acting in more of a reactionary manner, and not setting a technology direction that would benefit students and districts.

Given a lack of solid direction by industry leaders, many districts are finding new and creative ways to build their own solution for digital “textbook” content. The reason for the quotes is that in many cases these solutions are not “books” in the normal sense, but disparate content that is brought together to provide the basis for coursework.

A good example of this is the Indiana Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation. They reviewed many of their High School textbooks and were not impressed. Coupled with a directive from the state Social Studies specialists that said they would not be adopting any textbooks in 2011, the corporation decided to be creative. They kept the textbooks adopted in 2006, but added a subscription to NetTrekker which provides access to articles vetted by other teachers as a means of adding to the course curriculum.

The Vail District in Arizona went even further, creating their own “digital textbooks” leverage very low cost or even free content that they used to build their courses. Not only did the district save money, but they were able to bring more compelling materials to the classes.

The result of all this is that digital textbooks are a certainty, but they may not yet be at the point where simply “going digital” is an option right now for the next school year. However, now is the time to start the process of seeing what options are out there, how you can save budget dollars using digital information, and how your existing textbook suppliers are going to work with your district. Things have changed dramatically. Textbook manufacturers are no longer the only option as Vail has shown. Creativity and thinking outside the box is essential, and more importantly, appears to have many rewards.

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

20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education

20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education Photograph: Corbis Bridge / Alamy/Alamy

First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics:

• It supports and helps develop traditional literacies
• It's a life-long practice
• It's about skills, competencies and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied
• It's about social engagement

Top tips for developing the digital literacy of non-traditional students: Begin by exploring the ways in which the group are already using mobile and web based technologies. Many of them will already be engaging with tech for personal use, for example Skyping relatives, keeping in touch on Facebook or using mobile phones. If you have a group who aren't using technology in any of these ways, personal use might be where you start the conversation.

Literacy is not static: I like Bélisle's three models of literacy: functional, socio-cultural and transformational. The functional and practical skills required to function within a community; Socio-cultural refers to literacy only being meaningful within a social context, and facilitating access to cultural, economic and political structures. Transformational recognises that new ways of seeing and thinking about the world become possible as new cognitive and processing tools come into play.

All education sectors are facing many of the same challenges with digital literacy, so we can learn from one another: Some of the obvious issues are: how do we get staff to engage? How do we resource digital literacy support in an on-going and sustainable way? How do we make sure that organisations embed digital literacy as a cultural approach and expectation rather than as a discrete thing that one or two staff members are responsible for 'delivering'? What does a successful approach to digital literacy look like?

We have set up a partnership group, the Digital Leicester Advisory Group, with both Leicester universities and with community activists to support the promotion and expansion of digital literacy, inclusion and citizenship. I'm keen to support a move away from a perception of education as something that happens at specific times and in designated places, and towards planning and provision which takes the affordances of digital environments seriously and sees the city itself as the learning environment.

Recognise that students arrive with their own digital practices: We have some very well established practices in universities that traditionally we have tried to 'pass on' to students. But students are arriving with some well established digital practices of their own. It isn't always a question of 'both/and'. For example, referencing and plagiarism are areas where students' own digital practices and cultures clash with those of the university. We should identify the the values and history behind those academic practices, rather than slavishly learning Harvard style punctuation. We can't just see students as empty vessels to be filled up with what we do over here in academia.

Developing digital literacies in practice requires:
• Providing authentic contexts for practice, including digitally-mediated contexts
• Individual scaffolding and support
• Making practices of meaning-making explicit
• Anticipating and helping learners manage conflict between different practice contexts
• Recognising and helping learners integrate their prior conceptions and practices

This is a person-centred, culturally-situated approach to student development and it's important that developing digital literacies programme involves groups of staff that have always taken approach seriously, such as careers and employability staff, learning skills staff, as well as student-facing staff in libraries.

Establish guiding ethical principles: If you look at the graduate attributes that universities now ask their students to aspire to, many of them are really values. Developing digital literacy should also have an ethical dimension. What does it mean to behave well as digital professionals, researchers or citizens? How do we act ethically in environments where public and private are blurred?

Mid-career is the worst time for academics and professional staff to be up to date with technology: I've just been reviewing some audits that show that older and more secure academic staff may actually have more time to experiment and are more confident to admit they need to learn. It's all about having time, having opportunities for 'peer supported experimentation' - which turns out to be the best way to learn new technical tricks, and of course, having some incentive.

'Digital natives' need a basic understanding of computers as technical platforms, or of coding: As a teacher I am constantly aware of my own ignorance of coding skills and electronics, but still make a case for the value of not keeping technology in a black box and getting students to have a little more mastery by writing programs in an object-oriented language. I worry that our computers are becoming like our cars: we are increasingly dependent on them but when we open the hood and don't know what to do. I teach poets to program, so I feel it is valuable to everyone.

Acknowledge that there is also anxiety about technologies in the classroom and take the lead: Too many people in universities have been shirking their responsibilities to educate students about this important subject either because they feel anxiety about their own technical literacy or they feel the barbarians are at the gate, with many faculty members feeling that traditional literacies are under attack. If professors are going to be considered as experts rather than merely fodder for funny remixes like this one or this one they need to take the lead.

On managing your online identities: For years search engines treated Liz Losh and Elizabeth Losh as separate people, so my identity as a blogger and digital activist was very separate from my identity as a scholar and academic. No more. Google now knows that both names are me and that I can't have a divided personality. My only piece of advice is don't friend your students until after they graduate.

We need to understand learners personal digital literacies before ploughing into 'supporting' them: Many of the learners we have interviewed for our Visitors and Residents project still make quite a hard distinction between the 'real' i.e. books, lectures and so on and the digital. They have many highly effective digital literacies but often feel that they are not 'real' or legitimate approaches.

HEIs need to help legitimise digital practices without trying to own them: In my experience academics don't engage with digital tech because they don't need to. Their way of working is successful within the system. Has anyone been rewarded by their institutions for tweeting? Digital tech can improve the quality of what we do but often comes with an associated additional time/effort side effect, which is rarely officially acknowledged.

A key digital literacy is how you manage distraction: How to not get walked all over by Facebook et al. Many of the learners we have spoken to recognise that they are poor at managing this.

Engage students in this debate and ensure that they too have ownership of this agenda: Our terms may not mean anything to students. In the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme projects have been involving students as partners in their research and giving them a voice to express their views and ideas on what the term means to them, what skills they feel they need to live, learn and work effectively in a digital environment. See the PRIDE (University of Bath), CASCADE (University of Exeter) and DL in Transition (University of Greenwich) projects as excellent examples of how institutions are engaging students in this debate.

Reticence to adapt is less about the fear of the technology itself but about the fear of doing this differently from the way they've have always been done: Those of us who work in this space must show the benefits: for example how technology can save time or help HE staff do things easier. This is where we can also utilise the expertise of students to work with staff and assist them with gaining confidence in using new technologies. There is a lovely example from the University of Wolverhampton on students as partners in blended learning.

Digital literacy as an important part of transliteracy: Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. It is the literacy of convergence, unifying literacies past and present across different platforms, media and cultures. This means it encompasses all kinds of communications from scratching pictures in the sand to editing photos in Instagram, or from inscribing tablets to text-messaging. When promoting digital literacy on its own, we can alienate people who are already very literate in other areas, and that's why I prefer to take an holistic approach and be as inclusive as possible.

The idea that you build some kind of identifiable career capital online is likely to have a big influence on your ability to get a job: There is an assumption that the issue of digital literacy will go away because students are good with computers and have Facebook accounts. I think that in the context of learning organisations the question is how they can apply the skills that they have to new areas such as employability skills. Have a look at the site Dear Lisa Rogers, one social media fanatic's attempt to get the job of social media director at the University of Michigan, as an example of this.

Digital engagement shouldn't be lead by a platform or task-specific agenda: What is required is a change in consciousness in how we relate to technology. The underlying principle is that all technology should facilitate critical reflection - awareness of the self and the ability to articulate ideas. We need people to make judgements on the information they consume and the contexts they create whilst sharing information. Technology is becoming increasingly seamless but our relationship with it isn't intuitive.

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

View the original article here

20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education

20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education Photograph: Corbis Bridge / Alamy/Alamy

First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics:

• It supports and helps develop traditional literacies
• It's a life-long practice
• It's about skills, competencies and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied
• It's about social engagement

Top tips for developing the digital literacy of non-traditional students: Begin by exploring the ways in which the group are already using mobile and web based technologies. Many of them will already be engaging with tech for personal use, for example Skyping relatives, keeping in touch on Facebook or using mobile phones. If you have a group who aren't using technology in any of these ways, personal use might be where you start the conversation.

Literacy is not static: I like Bélisle's three models of literacy: functional, socio-cultural and transformational. The functional and practical skills required to function within a community; Socio-cultural refers to literacy only being meaningful within a social context, and facilitating access to cultural, economic and political structures. Transformational recognises that new ways of seeing and thinking about the world become possible as new cognitive and processing tools come into play.

All education sectors are facing many of the same challenges with digital literacy, so we can learn from one another: Some of the obvious issues are: how do we get staff to engage? How do we resource digital literacy support in an on-going and sustainable way? How do we make sure that organisations embed digital literacy as a cultural approach and expectation rather than as a discrete thing that one or two staff members are responsible for 'delivering'? What does a successful approach to digital literacy look like?

We have set up a partnership group, the Digital Leicester Advisory Group, with both Leicester universities and with community activists to support the promotion and expansion of digital literacy, inclusion and citizenship. I'm keen to support a move away from a perception of education as something that happens at specific times and in designated places, and towards planning and provision which takes the affordances of digital environments seriously and sees the city itself as the learning environment.

Recognise that students arrive with their own digital practices: We have some very well established practices in universities that traditionally we have tried to 'pass on' to students. But students are arriving with some well established digital practices of their own. It isn't always a question of 'both/and'. For example, referencing and plagiarism are areas where students' own digital practices and cultures clash with those of the university. We should identify the the values and history behind those academic practices, rather than slavishly learning Harvard style punctuation. We can't just see students as empty vessels to be filled up with what we do over here in academia.

Developing digital literacies in practice requires:
• Providing authentic contexts for practice, including digitally-mediated contexts
• Individual scaffolding and support
• Making practices of meaning-making explicit
• Anticipating and helping learners manage conflict between different practice contexts
• Recognising and helping learners integrate their prior conceptions and practices

This is a person-centred, culturally-situated approach to student development and it's important that developing digital literacies programme involves groups of staff that have always taken approach seriously, such as careers and employability staff, learning skills staff, as well as student-facing staff in libraries.

Establish guiding ethical principles: If you look at the graduate attributes that universities now ask their students to aspire to, many of them are really values. Developing digital literacy should also have an ethical dimension. What does it mean to behave well as digital professionals, researchers or citizens? How do we act ethically in environments where public and private are blurred?

Mid-career is the worst time for academics and professional staff to be up to date with technology: I've just been reviewing some audits that show that older and more secure academic staff may actually have more time to experiment and are more confident to admit they need to learn. It's all about having time, having opportunities for 'peer supported experimentation' - which turns out to be the best way to learn new technical tricks, and of course, having some incentive.

'Digital natives' need a basic understanding of computers as technical platforms, or of coding: As a teacher I am constantly aware of my own ignorance of coding skills and electronics, but still make a case for the value of not keeping technology in a black box and getting students to have a little more mastery by writing programs in an object-oriented language. I worry that our computers are becoming like our cars: we are increasingly dependent on them but when we open the hood and don't know what to do. I teach poets to program, so I feel it is valuable to everyone.

Acknowledge that there is also anxiety about technologies in the classroom and take the lead: Too many people in universities have been shirking their responsibilities to educate students about this important subject either because they feel anxiety about their own technical literacy or they feel the barbarians are at the gate, with many faculty members feeling that traditional literacies are under attack. If professors are going to be considered as experts rather than merely fodder for funny remixes like this one or this one they need to take the lead.

On managing your online identities: For years search engines treated Liz Losh and Elizabeth Losh as separate people, so my identity as a blogger and digital activist was very separate from my identity as a scholar and academic. No more. Google now knows that both names are me and that I can't have a divided personality. My only piece of advice is don't friend your students until after they graduate.

We need to understand learners personal digital literacies before ploughing into 'supporting' them: Many of the learners we have interviewed for our Visitors and Residents project still make quite a hard distinction between the 'real' i.e. books, lectures and so on and the digital. They have many highly effective digital literacies but often feel that they are not 'real' or legitimate approaches.

HEIs need to help legitimise digital practices without trying to own them: In my experience academics don't engage with digital tech because they don't need to. Their way of working is successful within the system. Has anyone been rewarded by their institutions for tweeting? Digital tech can improve the quality of what we do but often comes with an associated additional time/effort side effect, which is rarely officially acknowledged.

A key digital literacy is how you manage distraction: How to not get walked all over by Facebook et al. Many of the learners we have spoken to recognise that they are poor at managing this.

Engage students in this debate and ensure that they too have ownership of this agenda: Our terms may not mean anything to students. In the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme projects have been involving students as partners in their research and giving them a voice to express their views and ideas on what the term means to them, what skills they feel they need to live, learn and work effectively in a digital environment. See the PRIDE (University of Bath), CASCADE (University of Exeter) and DL in Transition (University of Greenwich) projects as excellent examples of how institutions are engaging students in this debate.

Reticence to adapt is less about the fear of the technology itself but about the fear of doing this differently from the way they've have always been done: Those of us who work in this space must show the benefits: for example how technology can save time or help HE staff do things easier. This is where we can also utilise the expertise of students to work with staff and assist them with gaining confidence in using new technologies. There is a lovely example from the University of Wolverhampton on students as partners in blended learning.

Digital literacy as an important part of transliteracy: Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. It is the literacy of convergence, unifying literacies past and present across different platforms, media and cultures. This means it encompasses all kinds of communications from scratching pictures in the sand to editing photos in Instagram, or from inscribing tablets to text-messaging. When promoting digital literacy on its own, we can alienate people who are already very literate in other areas, and that's why I prefer to take an holistic approach and be as inclusive as possible.

The idea that you build some kind of identifiable career capital online is likely to have a big influence on your ability to get a job: There is an assumption that the issue of digital literacy will go away because students are good with computers and have Facebook accounts. I think that in the context of learning organisations the question is how they can apply the skills that they have to new areas such as employability skills. Have a look at the site Dear Lisa Rogers, one social media fanatic's attempt to get the job of social media director at the University of Michigan, as an example of this.

Digital engagement shouldn't be lead by a platform or task-specific agenda: What is required is a change in consciousness in how we relate to technology. The underlying principle is that all technology should facilitate critical reflection - awareness of the self and the ability to articulate ideas. We need people to make judgements on the information they consume and the contexts they create whilst sharing information. Technology is becoming increasingly seamless but our relationship with it isn't intuitive.

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

View the original article here

MOOCs: a massive opportunity for higher education, or digital hype?

iTunesU is one of a few non-university sources of excellent and free video lectures from eminent authorities. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/REUTERS
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the latest addition to the acronym-bound lexicon of higher education, and quite possibly the most significant of them all. They represent a new generation of online education, freely accessible on the internet and geared towards very large student numbers.
Over recent months we have seen a remarkable spate of major MOOC ventures from top-ranked universities including MIT, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley, offering free access to lectures and courses sourced from world leaders in their fields. And in July, 12 universities in the US and Europe announced their involvement in Coursera, an internet course platform created by two Stanford University scientists.
The phenomenon has been likened by the president of Stanford University to "a digital tsunami", threatening to sweep aside conventional university education. Whether or not the rise of MOOCs will prove to warrant such hyperbole, there is no doubt that something very important is happening in the global system, raising profound questions about the very nature and future of higher education.
MOOCs are not entirely new. Both MIT and our own Open University have been offering open-source educational resources and short courses free online for some years, albeit mostly as 'tasters' for their mainstream provision. iTunesU, TED and Academic Earth are among non-university sources of excellent and free video lectures from eminent authorities. What is new about MOOCs is the scale, scope and pace of the ventures.
Major new players include Coursera, Udacity edX, Minerva, Khan Institute, Straightline and the University of the People. All offer a range of high quality courses, free to access, with varying degrees of online support, assignments, assessment and even certification for those completing programmes. Each is claiming to have signed-up hundreds of thousands of students worldwide, albeit with relatively small percentages persevering to complete their courses.
Unlike commercial online courses, such as those from the privately-owned University of Phoenix, most MOOCs have grown as not for profit spin-outs from US Ivy League universities and partner institutions across the world. They have nonetheless attracted over $100m of private venture capital investment this year already, as well as enthusiastic support from global information industry giants like Google and Pearson.
There are clear echoes here of the dot-com revolution of the late 1990s, reflected in the diversity of interpretations from higher education sector observers. Many share the view of the Stanford president that MOOCs replicate the disruptive innovations that have reshaped the global information, media and news industries, by shifting market power from the established players to parvenu start-ups and alternative providers.
Others are more sceptical, observing that the current MOOCs are essentially modern versions of the external correspondence courses that have been available for 50 years or more. Apologists for the university tradition point out that MOOCs do not offer degrees or even recognised credits towards the academic awards that distinguish 'proper' university graduates. Those with memories of the dot-com boom-and-bust years question the viability of a business model based on giving away your core products and potentially also your intellectual property rights.
The economic viability of open (read, free) online learning has yet to be established, but could be compared with other information-based internet industries. In the post-dot-com world, value and profits have come mainly from ownership of the technology platforms through which users access information and services. This gives the platform owners huge amounts of market intelligence and sales opportunities, generated by having hundreds of thousands of captive customers. That is why the global media and technology giants are queuing up to invest in this emerging market, that Global Industry Analysts Inc have estimated will be worth $100bn worldwide by 2015. And this is where the fiercest market battles are likely to be fought.
At this early stage of the MOOC revolution, it is premature to predict the impacts on conventional higher education providers. The universities and private venture funds investing in this area openly acknowledge the high level of experimentation and testing of waters involved. The current MOOC offerings are mostly digital versions of conventional pedagogies – what blogger Dan Butin has called "Learning 1.0 products in a Web 2.0 world".
This can and will change through the incorporation of the kinds of user interactivity already well-established in social media technologies. There is no inherent reason why MOOC-acquired learning cannot be accredited and recognised, especially as the market for degree-awarding powers opens up, subject perhaps to appropriate quality assurance arrangements.
If, or perhaps we should say when, MOOCs mature in these ways, they will challenge our basic notions of higher education, just as our relationships with news, entertainment and other information have been transformed. When knowledge and educational content become free commodities, how will universities justify the value of their fees? When degree-level programmes and supporting services become available on-demand, whenever and however students wish to access them, why should courses be tied to academic timetables based on the ecclesiastical calendar? And when the elements of higher education – content, courses, support, assessments, awards – are all separately available from world-class providers, what will be the role of the university?
Mike Boxall leads PA Consulting's
work with universities and colleges – follow him on Twitter @MikeBoxall1
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View the original article here