PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS, THE COURSE AND HIGHER EDUCATION – AN UNKEYNOTEMark Smithers (@marksmithers)

PROVOCATEUR

The views presented here are mine and do not represent the views of my employer.

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INTRODUCTION

WHAT I’LL BE TALKING ABOUT

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS

It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own backyard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.

FORECASTING THE DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY

"Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.“- Peter Drucker, Forbes magazine 1997

DEFINING DI

Christensen describes disruptive innovation as:

“Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream”

“Disruptive technologies bring to market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller and, frequently, more convenient to use”

DEFINING DI

THE DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

DIAGRAM

WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON?

WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON?

THIEL FELLOWSHIP

I HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS

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QUESTION – BE HONEST NOW

• Are you employed in a role in which you have no formal qualifications? What is it?

• What do you think you are really good at or know a lot about but for which you have no formal qualifications? Could you be employed in a role using your unqualified skills and/or knowledge?

• Are these things you learnt by doing a course? Or are they things that you learnt by yourself in an informal, ad-hoc way? Or something else?

• Let’s spend 5 minutes discussing and then see what capabilities we have in the room.

SOCIAL PROFESSIONAL REPUTATION

QUESTION – ON THE QUALIFICATION

• Should it be possible for people to achieve a qualification evidencing their learning and/or skills without completing a course?

• If it is possible then will it be important that people are able to do this?

• What will the effect be on the role of the course as it exists today if people can evidence their own learning without completing a course?

• Let’s spend 5 minutes thinking and sharing.

MAKING YOUR OWN LEARNING VISIBLE

QUESTION – ON THE MAKER CULTURE

• What happens when the barriers to the production of engaging content fall so low that anyone can create content?

• What does it mean when the students can produce learning content?

• What about when other people can create open content? What does it mean for the role of the academic as subject matter expert?

QUESTION – ON THE SHARING CULTURE

• What happens when content is shared openly and is built communally?

• What happens when learners engage with each other on their own in ways not mediated by the subject matter expert?

QUESTION – ON ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE

OPEN BADGES

QUESTION – ON CREDENTIALING

• Do we need credentialing?

• What are we measuring?

• What is the role of the wider community in credentialing?

• How will we credential?

• Do degrees still have a place?

• What will be the role of professional organisations?

THE OBLIGATORY MOOC SLIDE

QUESTION – WHAT WILL COURSES LOOK LIKE?

• Will they look the same?

• Will they be time and place dependent?

• Will there be instances of courses that occur between fixed intervals?

• When will we enrol in courses?

• Will courses resemble communities of practice?

• How will personal learning environments interact with course learning environments?

• Who will build courses?

• Who will run courses?

• Spend 5 to 10 minutes talking about how courses may look in 20 years time.

Traditional

Higher Degree

SPOC

xMOOC cMOOC Professional Development Training

Community Course

Informal, ad-hoc open

Online No Partly Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Mostly

Open No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Directed Yes Yes Yes Yes Partly Yes No No

Structured Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No

Time based Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No

Fixed outcome

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No

Topic focussed

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Personal Very low Low Low Low High High Very High Very High

Social Very low Low Low Low High Low High High

School/ early tertiary

education

Small, Private Online

Courses COURSES

QUESTION – WHAT WILL TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS LOOK

LIKE?• How will universities, colleges and further education providers look in the

future?

• Smaller? Larger? More specialised? More general?

• Virtual? Bricks and mortar?

• Spend 5 minutes thinking about what your institution might be like in 20 years time.

WHAT DOES A UNIVERSITY DO NOW?

The three purposes of the University? – To provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.

I have sometimes thought of it [the university] as a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.

- Clark Kerr

WHAT WILL HIGHER EDUCATION DO?

ADAPT

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RETREAT

SPECIALISE

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FAMOUS SCHOOLS

QUESTION - WHAT ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC?

• Do you think that the role of the academic will change?

• Will we still have the notion of academic and non academic?

• How do personal learning environments change the nature of the academy?

• Spend 5 minutes at your table?

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS

In the academy, we lecture other people every day about learning from history. Now its our turn, and the risk is that we’ll be the last to know that the world has changed, because we can’t imagine - really cannot imagine -that story we tell ourselves about ourselves could start to fail. Even when it’s true. Especially when it’s true.

- Clay Shirky, 2012

CAN THE UNIVERSITY CHANGE?

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SUMMARY – WHY I’M AN OUTRAGEOUS OPTIMIST

Future is more social, more flexible, more personal but…

… we’ll still have courses, there will just be a wider range of types of courses.

And they will be better than they are now.

HOW MIGHT IT ALL FIT TOGETHER?