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Opinion: Higher-ed disruption handing control to consumers
Digital disruption hits traditional universities hard but good changes should outweigh bad.
By Michael Hewitt-Gleeson
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These conclusions have been mostly stripped of the evidence and logic that would support them. How much of these predictions is solidly based? How much is a guess?
What Universities sell consumers is twofold – a learning environment and an esteemed qualification.
To take the second part first, online tests for qualifications are subject to identity fraud. If you cannot guarantee who actually earned the qualification, it loses any esteem. This is not a simple problem for technology to solve. Telstra employees tried for years to build an electronic voting system that could guarantee the identity of the voter, and failed. Human ingenuity to disrupt the test validity should not be underestimated. My opinion is that progress in digital education will be rapid only if we solve this wicked problem.
Now for the learning experience. Yes, you learn when you are inspired and interested, not when you are herded into a classroom. But understanding is more than knowing facts, and it is people that inspire you. Sometimes that can be done digitally, but some things require real experiences. There is nothing like touching a real animal to get interested in it, whether it be a wallaby, a snake or a fish. And having others around that are inspired by learning too is a wonderful gift to boost the learning process. My opinion is that if campuses can provide inspirational places and people to foster renowned learning environments, they will remain magnets for the students who want the best education.
After returning to University to work in the midst of this new digital frontier and the massifcation of education a few things have struck me. IT Technology is no longer frightening and much like the introduction of the car, ATMS, the telephone we are confortable using it, but at the same time the ease of use people are becoming more unaware of how the car actually works and can not problem solve without an mechanic/IT guru/software or system aware person both for students and staff. Technology will still need some form of human to ask for help, to prepare, submit and trouble shoot (most likely lowly paid call centre staff without IT training or degrees or diploma). The next thing is that the massification of education in Australia at least has put immense strain on Lecturers passing and or advising and helping some people improve who lack a range of basic skills from using Word and the IT infrasturcture, basic digita informationl literacy with finding appropriate resources and most importantly critical abilities to decide if something is a worthwhile supporting article for their argument or untested web opinion. Writing and constructing an argument or new idea is also a skill that most students lack as our society actually moves away from a critical and argumentive post 1960s western tradtional to a rote learning confucious and neo-con western tradition. The last bone to pick is that in my humble opinion some disciplines teach facts and you regurgitate them, but in the western tradition (which stretches back supposedly to Classical Greecs but really starts gaining ground in the Enlightment onwards) has emphasised proposing an idea or argument, testing it and supporting it and then publishing it for others to critiques across the sciences including the social sciences, yes there is an emphasis on defending your argument but there is also an emphasis on proving or disproving an idea be it established or not. This is what has driven the west for the last 200 years past the other areas of the world and this idea has permeated right outwards in Australia’s case to the most disenfrancihised form the intellectual tradition.