Collective Learning

Any group has knowledge that is distinct from its members. It can do things its members could not and would not do individually. Personal knowledge of group members is not additive, it is multiplicative and synergistic: The whole is greater than (or at least different from) the sum of the parts.

“Collective” simply means “forming a whole or aggregate … of, done by, or characteristic of individuals acting in cooperation” (collective, n.d.). When applied to learning it means a gain in capabilities or knowledge by multiple persons in cooperation, as a whole.

Extinction, Meltdown, or Just Irrelevance

There are a lot of commentators predicting doom and gloom for higher education. The sector does seem to have hit the saturation phase of a Kondratiev long wave, meaning that it is headed for (already in?) stagnation and inevitable collapse. We’ll see… here’s a few cogent commentators:

Best selling author and internet marketing expert Seth Godin sees mass marketing and escalating costs of higher education, combined with eroding market value of a degree and primary concern with accreditation rather than useful knowledge as leading higher education to a meltdown.

University life, particularly the classroom experience, is simply so out of line with students’ everyday experience and their work-life expectations that higher education is becoming irrelevant, says Thomas Hanson on OpenEducation.net. He is primarily repeating and summarizing the criticisms of David Wiley.

Vonda Sines reiterates Godin’s points about the abundance of tech-savvy PhDs looking for work, and willing to work much cheaper than tenured faculty. She extends Wiley’s criticism to consider what higher education is becoming. Aggregations of disassociated individuals electronically delivering and consuming chunks of curriculum.

Georgia Tech professors Rich DeMillo and Dick Lipton maintain that place-based, traditional universities must refocus on what they do best: advanced degrees, innovation, and research. General education should be left to online and for-profit higher education enterprises.

A general strategy is suggested by Richard Vedder, after he notes some troubling trends from the Delta Cost Project. He suggests universities get serious about the three I’s rather than the three A’s (access, affordability, and accountability). Universities have almost no information about outcomes of higher education for students. Incentives in higher education reward publish-anything and fiefdom-building rather than good teaching and administration (Godin and others also make this point). Better information and incentives will lead to innovation.

Will all of this lead to extinction, meltdown, or just irrelevance? Or are these folks and others who make similar points just alarmist, or just plain wrong? What do you think?

The UTC of the Future?

Here is a different UTC, the University of the Customer, with a structure rather different from our august, beloved institutions. Bill Sams considers what Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” might look like in higher education.

Sams provides this as his imaginary university’s mission:

“Our goal is to optimize the personal capabilities of our customers on a lifelong basis and to match those capabilities with the needs of business and society in a mutually profitable relationship,”

It’s structured around three complementary units, Customer Care, Customer Services, and Customer Results.

The model’s fundamental flaw is that Sams doesn’t adequately address the self-directed and social aspects of learning. Also, the “model” needs stronger means of validation. I’m just saying…

Regardless, this is a great think piece!

Jaron Lanier advocates more spaceships in the classroom

The original cyber-punk, and one of the most original internet actors, says the way we’re using technology in education is bassackwards. “If machines are to improve teaching, we must recognize their limits — and our own capacity for magic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19fob-essay-t.html

Studentsfirst.org

It will be interesting to see what comes from this.