Reporting from ECAR's 2011 Symposium

From sunny (not) Chicago the 2011 ECAR Symposium -- IT as a Game Changer -- using IT to alter the outcomes of education. Not just incremental change, but aiming for the new game.

Susan Grajek, ECAR's new head is opening the conference. She's definitely speaking about Vegan Cats!

Questions:
- role of CIO -- plumbing strategist from innovation leader
- do-more-with-less focus
- where is the innovation? (outside of central IT)
- who's running the store -- where is the store? (outsourcing)

Carlson's Law
"Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic and smart..."

Higher Ed changes
- cost pressures, institutional ties weakening, demand for innovative services up, more and more legislation locking us down, (Stephen Wolfram) why do we need universities?

Surely, IT can help.
- automation, standards, portability, analytics, new technologies

What else can IT do to assist?

First keynote, Doug Lynch from the University of Pennsylvania
- IT should have a fundamental role in education -- s/b plausible
- sees Bb, iPads, browsers and the Internet as current essentials

Hypothesis #1
- suggests we're doing a great job of solving the wrong problem
- uses an analogy of buggy whip business while cars were coming
-- see "To Embrace the Past, Let Go of the Future" -- another plug

Note: only 27% of learners are traditional students; 50% are adult learners
- thus, students are changing
- we are designing for traditional students -- the wrong problem
- students are saying they are not interested in the traditional forms
- why front-end learning in 4+ years when lifelong learning and multi-career change

Hypothesis #2 -- universities are not bastions of innovation anymore
- US corps send $267B on research, schools, $49B

But, universities invented the computer...we used to drive the R&D agenda on how to make the world better with technology

-- Now, see example of CourseKit ed tech innovators
- we're out of the loop

Hypothesis #3 - We're not great at teaching
- 70% of current faculty in US are not tenured
- NAAL found only 31% of graduating students are functionally literate
-- thus, unclear as to how good we are at teaching within current models

How is the "market" responding?
- colleges are closing
- Phoenix has 545,000 students; largest teacher generator
- 17 corporate universities got regional accreditation; over 500 up and running

Some believe we can be Fortress U.

Brad Wheeler from Indiana suggests the world has gone macro and we're staying micro.

- many of us are getting huge enrolments and doing well -- why would we change?

Hypothesis #4
- even with all our cool technologies, we are not changing the fundamental methods of teaching and learning

From the US federal government's classification of instructional programme (CIP) or Penn's degree/certificate/diploma guidelines -- not heavily proscribed -- could be much different and still fit guidelines

Universities are not thinking like Google or Amazon. We're working on improving costs with scale.

FACT: There's a school in NYC where every students gets an individualised program of study --- every day!!! Not scalable, but really good.

Debate taking place as to whether capacities to learn have changed due to availability of information.

Could see diversity of school types as a market of education providers. But if you go to onine learning the tools and content look about the same.

Hypothesis #5:
The tech platform of higher education is paper.

Cool Tech Note: Wanted to change the time zone on my Mac (in Chicago it's 1 hour earlier than Toronto). Asked the Mac to set automatically based on location and it found me and reset the clock. Okay, not a game changer, but cool.

BW: Maybe we've not been good at reflecting on the results/outcomes of the ed tech spending over the last decade.

IDEA: Imaging Netflix customised for kids. Turns out the time to do exceeds manual process (there was an experiment) and results were not better.

Lynch questions whether the following aspects are essential for better IT:

- global awareness, critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration, media fluency, entrepreneurialism, innovation, effective writing, analytical skills, creativity, information literacy, problem solving, effective speaking

He thinks we need to spend more time with lots of small "bets" on technology rather than big answers.

Discussions now surrounding ways faculty are changing teaching methods using technology. Concerns about giving up too soon -- new ideas need time. Also some comments about penalties for failure working against innovation. Stay safe, keep your job.

IT folks need to change our approach to helping faculty do stuff -- things that we may not like to do -- like blocking the Internet to test an hypothesis.

Again, to succeed, get small victories to show value. Works with today's environment. This is consistent with new neural pathway creation and agile behaviours.

Example, kids who are learning to walk feel nothing bad about falling. They keep trying.

Let's experiment as much as possible within the context of being responsible. Hard to balance.

Lynch wonders whether we need a DARPA for ed_tech.

We need resources and protection to be able to experiment.

We need to help researchers find ways to bring their ideas to market. (The Provost's IT Courseware Development Fund used to be (and will again be) a way to support faculty innovation. IT has to help.