EDUCAUSE | Future of Higher Education

Podcast: Today's Clash of Cultures on Campuses and the Role IT Needs to Play

gbayne — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:12:34 -0500

This 47 minute podcast features a keynote address from the EDUCAUSE 2008 Enterprise Conference. The speech, "Today's Clash of Cultures on Campuses and the Role IT Needs to Play," is by Morris W. Beverage Jr., President of Lakeland Community College.

Campuses today face a growing number of clashing cultures. Faculty struggle with traditional methods of teaching in an environment where demands for flexibility and convenience are rising. Learners increasingly treat a college degree like a commodity. Battles rage over resource allocation. Politicians are exerting influence on campus operations and outcomes. This session addresses these issues and the role IT departments need to play to help higher education not just survive, but thrive.

Podcast: Leading Ahead of the Curves

gbayne — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:37:29 -0500

In this hour-long podcast we feature the closing keynote address from the EDUCAUSE 2008 Midwest Regional Conference. The speech was delivered by Brad Wheeler, Vice President for IT, CIO, and Professor at Indiana University and is entitled, "Leading Ahead of the Curves". A PowerPoint Presentation is also available.

Three curves—technical possibility, social desirability, and economic feasibility over time—describe the forces that shape college and university IT challenges. The consumerization of technology, insourcing and outsourcing, edge or leveraged services on campus, and multi-institutional community source are timely opportunities for IT leaders who can wisely discern these curves.

Learning from the Future - EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference Opening General Session

llarsen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:40:16 -0600

Summary of the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference Opening General Session, January 15, 2008.

Learning from the Future
Malcolm B. Brown, Director of Academic Computing, Dartmouth College

Abstract: With information technology evolving at a seemingly breakneck pace, trying to predict the future of IT seems every bit as daunting as predicting movements of the stock exchange. Yet we as IT professionals must plan appropriately for new and emerging technologies that have relevance for teaching, learning, and creative expression. The Horizon Report, a project of the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, is one of many tools we have to help us map the future to the present. In this presentation we will consider ways tools like the Horizon Report can help us chart our course.

This session was recorded for podcast and is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/educausepodcastlearningfr/46108

A pdf of the slides are available at http://www.educause.edu/MARC08/Program/13415?PRODUCT_CODE=MARC08/GS01

The Horizon Report is available at http://www.nmc.org/horizon

Malcolm Brown began his presentation by adding a subtitle to his presentation so that it read: Learning from the Future, or how I learned to stop worrying and embrace hyperchange

And with apologies to George Santayana (Life of Reason) he revised his famous quotation to say: “Those who cannot learn from the future are condemned to miss it.”

Brown said it would be good if the topic could be characterized with just one word. In the 1960s film, The Graduate, that word was plastics. The word today with respect to change and innovations might be Google – these words indicate a boundless energy to innovate and bring new things on board.

Innovation is the way we learn from the future, by change and anticipating innovation, not just building a better mousetrap. Innovation is defined as a new method, idea, or product. A few synonyms for innovation are change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, and shake-up.

Innovation is change and change is innovation, ergo, innovation happens.

Innovation is edgy, risky enterprise, a pain, lots of fun, overrated, underrated, but – is it cool?

Brown used a photo of a Cane toad (the environmentally disastrous Australian amphibian with toxic skin and no predators) as the response face to innovation with reactions such as “what?!? We have to upgrade again!” and “you IT people always need money” to indicate that sometimes innovation is downright ugly.

But he went on to say that innovation can be “cool” and described the dimensions of innovation. Both the stapler and the electronic voting machine were innovations but it is hard to claim which is a major innovation and which is a minor innovation.

Innovation can be

Incremental (evolutionary) or sweeping (revolutionary)
Reinforcing or disruptive
Small scope or large scale
Current paradigm or emerging paradigm

Brown said context determines the dimensions of the innovations and innovations are always embedded in context.

Diffusion:

Quoting diffusion theory from The Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers, he described the elements of diffusion to be:

Innovation
Communication via channels
Time
Within a social system

He offered an illustration of diffusion which was the expansion/diffusion of courses in a course management system. The dimensions of diffusion, as Brown sees it, control the rate of propagation and are

Relative advantage of the innovation - Is this new gizmo? with a large or small advantage?
Compatibility – Is it compatible with what you are doing now?
Complexity – How complex is the innovation and it’s potential implementation?
Trialability – Can we try it out? With minimal risk?
Observability – watch what happens – has my colleague tried it out and survived –much like penguins gather at the water’s edge until one falls in and the others watch to see if it gets eaten.

Brown said that, for an innovation to be diffused, it must be sustained, nurtured, cultivated, and revised.

Paradigms

Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 seminal work on the structure of scientific revolutions brought paradigm and paradigm shift to our common language, set out in his Kuhnian paradigms the following elements:

Set of beliefs or consensus
Coherent
Shared implying community
The paradigm gives us our agenda – the bases for research and problem solving

Brown gave an example. As we’ve asked “what is light?” over the centuries the pace at which technology increases, the pace in the change of paradigms increases

Newton in the 17th century thought it was material corpuscles
Young & Fresnel in the 19th century thought it was transverse wave motion
Einstein & Planck, in the 20th century thought it was quantum mechanical

Lord Kelvin said “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement” but Brown argues that this is within a paradigm. When observation shows disruption then we switch to a new paradigm.

Education becomes learning as it moves from transmission (publishing, big content, authority, control) to collaborative learning (participation, micro-content, cooperation)

Hyper-change can be a period of

Rapid paradigm shift or
Multiple shifts going on at the same time or
A gradual major shift or
Some combination of all three

Brown referenced The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christiansen

Sustaining innovations are incremental, established paradigm, valued by the current customer, and are predictable

Disruptive innovations under-perform, are a new paradigm or quest of a new paradigm,

appeal to a niche group, and are unpredictable.

His example was the natural ice harvesting industry that went from shipping 7 tons in 1806 to 150 tons by 1850. With ice cutting innovations they increased production and harvest and by 1870 14 firms in Boston were shipping 700 tons. As there were cost differentials in shipping to the south, ice plants were created within the South. The Boston firms only needed to harvest 200 tons by 1886 because of better shipping methods. However, the 1930s coup de grace was the invention of the electric refrigerator which caused the demise of the natural ice harvesting industry by 1945.

The lessons from this example were

Failure to recognize the implications of the ice plant innovation
Creativity was directed toward defending and enhancing existing methods
Demise was obscured by a growing market for ice
Success tends to entrench us and cause our own downfall

Sustaining innovation works within the current paradigm

Disruptive innovation works within a new paradigm

We have to be careful about putting all of our energies into the current paradigm and the business at hand. We need to put some of our energies into discovering new paradigms outside our day-to-day work.

Technology and the future

“Technology has often played a vital role in the emergence of new science” (Thomas Kuhn)
- Discover Magazine says – “Discoverà Science, Technology, and the Future”
- The Graduate (1960) said “there’s a great future in plastics” (Plastics today include light emitting polymers, rolled up screens, wearable TVs, videophones, and cars changing colors.)

Success and Failure

Brown gave examples of a number of innovations that were failures. The reasons for failures were:

Key missing technologies (or underperforming technology)
Problems in scaling production
Economic power of rivals
Timing is wrong
Prejudice - timing is wrong – why ethanol fuel is in favor now but not earlier.

Brown suggests we can foster innovation by scanning the horizon for a good model. We should be on the lookout all of the time for new developments. It helps tremendously to be in tune with technology. He described the annual Horizon Report Project that is a collaboration between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium. The Project goal each year is to ask the questions and identify six technologies that will have significant impact on learning and creative expression over one year, 2-3 years, and 4-5 years.

The Horizon Report Project board is eclectic. It has multiple inputs/perspectives from higher education internationally, industry, museums, press, etc. They use a process timeline that keeps them on track that includes Wiki orientations (establishing a collaboratory), press clippings & research questions (research phase), review of past reports, and then they rank and vote to confirm their short list.

Brown outlined the predictions from the Horizon Reports from 2004 to 2007. The 2008 report was not available at the time of the presentation.

Each of the reports embeds the technologies within the context of the trends and challenges. They provide real-world examples and offer additional readings.

The key trends for 2007 were

Rapid change is occurring for higher education
Increasing globalization
Information literacy as a growing challenge
Agreement that the faculty reward system is out of sync
Collective intelligence is pushing scholarship
Technology divergence between faculty and students

The key challenges for 2007 were

Assessing new forms of work and expression
Leadership within the higher education to exploit rapid change
Copyright and IP issues
Skill gaps between knowing tools and knowing how to create content
New forms of assessment needed for collaborative learning
Increasing pressure to deliver content to new technology formats/devices
Faculty rewards are out of sync with the technology

Brown suggests that good ways to use the Horizon Report to your benefit your institutions are

Give copies to senior administration
Form discussion groups
Model the HR methodology on your own campus
Act on it

Step One: Scan for emerging technologies

Review the Horizon Reports
Network with folks in industry
Gartner reports
Watch your students
Watch your own kids
Data mine help desk reports
Form a local futures council
Read key publications such as the MIT tech review
Keep tabs on the Blogosphere.

Step Two: Make it an explicit priority (Are they visited on us, or stumbled upon, or is it an explicit effort.)

Consult your local paradigms – how do you think about yourself. Read your mission statements. See where you spend your dollars.
Talk to your students.
Encourage staff to be a bit risky and innovate.
Fence off space (framework) for innovation – Google Mac Developer playground - time off to look at innovation
Expect to fail - Brown quoted Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma “Failure is intrinsic to the process of finding new markets for disruptive technologies”

Points:

The first time you might fail so you need to be persistent.
Fishing expedition illustration - expect to fail but increase your chances of success by getting the right bait, location, etc.
Must be open but decide when enough is enough

====================

Q&A

Q: When do you know when to stop going down a “bad” path? When do you decide you have failed?

A: Understand why something failed - example: HPs Kittyhawk drive – 1.8inch drive for PDA market (Newtons) that didn’t take it off but had no resources to dumb it down for the video game market.

Q: How do you choose among possible innovations when you don’t have infinite resources?

A: You should focus on your target audience.

C: You can’t just present the new technologies. You need to get early adopters and get past disruptive stage.

C: Faculty rewards are out of sync with the technology – they are based on refereed citations – but now the focus is shifting to collaborative/community based content

This session was recorded for podcast and is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/educausepodcastlearningfr/46108

A pdf of the slides are available at http://www.educause.edu/MARC08/Program/13415?PRODUCT_CODE=MARC08/GS01

The Horizon Report is available at http://www.nmc.org/horizon

EDUCAUSE Podcast: Learning from the Future

gbayne — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:27:45 -0600

This podcast features a keynote speech from the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference 2008, featuring Malcolm B. Brown, Director of Academic Computing at Dartmouth College. His speech is entitled "Learning from the Future".

Malcolm Brown is Director of Academic Computing at Dartmouth College. His group supports the applications of computing in research and the curriculum. Academic Computing is also responsible for classroom technology support as well as video production. He has worked actively with the ELI, contributing chapters the the ebooks, helping to plan focus sessions, and serves on the ELI Advisory board. He is a member of the Educause Evolving Technolgies committee and is on the faculty of the Educause Learning Technology Leadership workshop. He has been on the board for the Horizon report for the past four years and served as Chair of Board of the New Medium Consortium. He is currently serving as the editor of the New Horizons column for the Educause Review. Malcolm holds a pair of BA degrees from UC Santa Cruz, studied in Freiburg, Germany, on a pair of Fulbright scholarships, and has a PhD in German Studies from Stanford University. He has taught several courses in Dartmouth’s Jewish Studies program. He is a member of the Frye Institute class of 2002.

ELI In Conversation: George Siemens and Michael Wesch Talk About Future Learning.

gbayne — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:48:53 -0600

In this podcast we feature a conversation between George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. and Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University It was recorded at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Michael Wesch presented a session entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting. He also produced a video, which is referenced in this conversation, entitled "The Machine is Us/ing Us".

George Siemens presented a session entitled, "Connectivism" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

ELI Annual Video: Human Futures for Technology and Education

gbayne — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:51:45 -0600

The slides and video of this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, and is entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Digital information technologies have profound implications for education and force us to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and who we think we are teaching. Understanding these implications and rethinking education will help us prepare our students to build a more human future in an increasingly digital environment.

ELI Podcast: Human Futures for Technology and Education

gbayne — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:42:42 -0600

In this hour long podcast we feature a speech by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

ELI Annual Video: Connectivism

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:33:13 -0600

Video and slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. This plenary session is entitled, "Connectivism".

The waves of technological and social change have eroded the effectiveness of traditional views regarding what, how, and why to educate. To effectively educate learners, fundamental assertions need to be rethought: the design of schools and curriculum, the nature of knowledge in a connected world, the relationship between educator and learner, the means and methods of authenticating information and knowledge, and, perhaps most significantly, what it means “to know” in complex, rapidly developing, and chaotic environments. This session will present connectivism as a theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit.

ELI Podcast: Connectivism

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:39:13 -0600

In this 58 minute podcast, we feature a session by George Siemens, Associate Director for the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, entitled, "Connectivism". This speech was recorded at the ELI 2008 Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Jim Neal, VP for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University

gbayne — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:58:49 -0600

In this 20 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Jim Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University. He provides leadership for university academic computing and network services as well as a system of twenty-five libraries. He also works with the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). He serves on key academic, technology, budget and policy groups at the University.

Neal has also represented the American library community in testimony on copyright matters before Congressional committees and was an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference on copyright. He has worked on copyright policy and advisory groups for universities and professional and higher education associations. He was selected the 1997 Academic/Research Librarian of the Year by ALA's Association of College and Research Libraries.

Neal has served on the Council and Executive Board of the American Library Association (ALA), on the Board and as President of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and as Chair of OCLC's Research Library Advisory Council. He currently is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and on the Board of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). He has also served on numerous international, national and state professional committees, and is an active member of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA).

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2007 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org