The Emerging Future

I haven’t blogged much recently about the impacts of technology on higher education, but there’s a lot that’s been happening in that world. It might be a good time to put down my thoughts on developments that have occurred in recent months.

It is increasingly clear to me that we at Georgetown made a good decision to “get in the game” of exploiting technology to enhance learning. We made the decision at a time when the precise features of the future of higher education were still murky. (To be honest, they still remain so.) But opting out would have cheated our students and faculty from learning how best to use new tools.

There are some interesting things happening across the country. Some universities are granting academic credit to courses offered in MOOC format by other universities. Some may have local instructors assist the students with the material in the MOOC. Some are using pieces of a MOOC from another university to supplement the local face-to-face teaching.

There’s now more evidence about dropouts from MOOCs. It’s common to have only 10% or fewer completions, but a much higher rate among those who are taking the course to obtain some certification of having taken the course. Cause and effect is murky here; those willing to pay $50-150 to obtain certified documentation that they completed the course are likely to be more motivated than those entering the course with other plans.

Clearly, applying the experience of MOOCs to the issues of the costs and efficiency of higher education still poses great puzzles. Understanding student motivation and incentives toward perseverance is key. The good instructors among us are expert at identifying the signs of confusion or detachment that need their intervention to maximize individual learning.
One can imagine a feedback loop from MOOC data analytics of student behaviors that would eventually lead to personalized learning designs tailored to individual motivational needs. We as a community have much work to do on this. I’m quite hopeful that our focus on blending technology with traditional face-to-face modes may actually be the fastest way to achieve such personalization.

MOOCs are quickly entering a new, predictable phase as their numbers increase. How does a student efficiently find the best MOOCs for his/her purposes when there are 100’s or 1000’s of them available? MOOC rating sites have emerged that are crowd sourcing opinions of the best and worst MOOCs. These are likely to grow in influence. Clearly, if so, they will have enormous influence on shaking out the popular MOOCs from the unpopular MOOCs. The next obvious step will be an era of imitating the techniques of the most popular MOOCs in new MOOCs. This is good, I think. It could lead to quality-improvement and a return of attention to what the student audience needs to learn. (Of course, none of us know yet whether the quality of the student evaluations will identify the best learning experiences or merely the best entertainment.)

There seems to be more speculation about the shape of future university curricular features:

1. Some are speculating that future course lengths will probably not be limited to the typical 15-week format. There’s much more heterogeneity in length emerging in courses with technological assists. It’s easy to speculate that universities might adopt more varied “bite sizes” of knowledge. This might resemble the module course structures common to business schools and some graduate programs.
2. The cost pressures faced by parents of those seeking higher education will probably lead to discussions of new educational packages. For example, some universities are considering new degree programs that may involve high school completion of university courses leading to Master’s degrees in four years after high school. This would be an evolution of the already-existing 5 year BA-MA programs.
3. Shared teaching among instructors seems to fit well some of the new technology, as one instructor might build one module of a course and another, another. This could be a quality increase in instruction with proper wisdom guiding the design of the courses.
4. An increased focus on assessment of learning objectives will probably emerge. With an increasing variety of ways for students to learn, they’ll be pressures to assess that learning toward fulfillment of degree-based learning objectives. This should gradually threaten the status quo of defining a degree as a certain number of courses rather than the achievement of specific learning objectives.

We at Georgetown need to navigate our own way through this future, staying true to our principles and unique strengths. We’re entering this world with a firm vision on one dimension – 100 years from now there will be a hilltop where students come to work together with faculty, enjoying multifaceted personal interactions with them. How they will learn together must take advantage of the best technologies available at that time.

In my opinion, the faculty have responded with high enthusiasm to opportunities to explore how to enhance learning through technology. For example, with the Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning, we’ve seen great creativity among Georgetown faculty in proposing new ways of teaching in their areas of expertise. I’m sure we can successfully shape our emerging future.