Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Education David Wiley, PhD Department of Instructional Psychology & Technology Brigham Young University

This Is Your 11:20 Wake-up Call Your institution will be irrelevant by 2020

“ The World is Changed” Galadriel, Lord of the Rings

It’s Actually Worse (or Better) The World is Changing

Analog  Digital Music, Phones, TV, Newspapers, Movies, Journals, Communications, Intelligence, Defense

Tethered  Mobile Phones, Internet Access, Employment

Isolated  Connected People, Content, Systems

Generic  Personal Cars, Computers, Mobile Phones

Consuming  Creating Radio / Podcasting, Newspapers / Blogs Movies / Vodcasting

Closed  Open Software (OSs, Applications), Data (Weather, GIS), Content (Blogs, Wikis)

Then vs Now Analog  Digital Tethered  Mobile Isolated  Connected Generic  Personal Consumption  Creating Closed  Open

Education vs Everyday Analog  Digital Tethered  Mobile Isolated  Connected Generic  Personal Consumption  Creating Closed  Open

“ Daily Divide” Is a Huge Threat And the wider the disconnect, the bigger the threat to higher education

But Wait! We’re Education! Our historic monopoly is (gratefully) being challenged on almost every front

Why Do Students Come? Content, Support Services Social Life, Degrees

Content OpenCourseWares, Wikipedia, Public Library of Science, Arxiv.org, Google Scholar, Flat World Knowledge, etc.

Support Services ChaCha, Yahoo! Answers, RateMyProfessor, Email, Instant Messaging, Twitter, etc.

Social Life Facebook, MySpace, MMOG, iPhone location-aware apps, etc.

Degrees MCSE, RHCE, CCNA

The Monopoly Is Being Busted Everything we provide is now offered by someone else

When Institutions Specialize They usually provide better quality at a better price

Higher Ed, On the Other Hand 76% increase in cost over 10 years How’s our quality?

Industries Failing Everywhere Banks, Insurance, Automobiles Higher Education?

A Bail Out for Higher Ed? Utah 4% cut, Pennsylvania 5 % cut, Massachusetts 5 % cut, Virginia 7 % cut

No Monopoly and No Bail Out How can we innovate to stay relevant?

What About E-learning?

What About E-learning? Quite innovative in 1995!

Characteristics of E-learning Analog or Digital Tethered or Mobile Isolated or Connected Generic or Personal Consuming or Creating Closed or Open

We’ve Only Changed the Channel Our pedagogy and philosophy are as just as they’ve always been

The Polo Parable A story about our move to online teaching and learning

Photo by e.dward

Photo by Christopher Henning

We’re Swimming on Horseback And rather proud of ourselves, I must say

Online is a Different Place The goals of teaching are the same, but the culture and rules in that space are only sort of the same

We’re Celebrating the Mass in Latin And our students are expecting charismatic worship with guitars, drums, and “Amen!”s

It’s About Respect Its about valuing culture and designing for it just as we would if teaching in Bangalore, Beijing, or Barcelona

Some Say Learning Has Changed Digital natives or millennials have brains that function differently

It’s About ATIs In the “aptitude by treatment interaction” literature, the only individual difference that matters is prior knowledge

Openness is the Cornerstone Openness underpins everything interesting happening online and is “what they know”

Why Make Such a Claim? Let’s ask Alexa what the 50 most popular sites on the web are…

Sites Where Anyone Can: Share a video, share a photo, share a blog post, share their personal info, share their ratings, share their files, share their expertise

Characteristics of E-learning Analog or Digital Tethered or Mobile Isolated or Connected Generic or Personal Consumption or Creating Closed or Open

Connecting You can’t connect to something if you don’t have access to it

Personalizing You can’t adapt or localize something if you don’t have the rights to modify it

Creating You won’t be creative if there’s no outlet for your work

How Might We Open Things? Higher Ed needs to figure this out

Materials Intended for Teachers Teachers only account for 15% of users

Lecture Notes Courses Around $15k per course

Video-based Courses Around $30k per course

“ Open 1.0” Hundreds of universities around the globe sharing over 6,000 courses (Will you show up on Google?)

Surely There Are Other Ways? Sharing some experiments

Connecting and Openness Sharing some experiments

Personalizing and Openness Sharing some experiments

Creating and Openness Sharing some experiments

Being Even More Open Sharing some experiments

Character Classes Bard (Master of the lore, history, and politics of the field, know what's “out there”) Artisan (Has materials production skills in all the necessary Web 1.0 and 2.0 tools like HTML, video sharing, podcasting) Monk (Master of copyright and licensing arcana and defender of the university brand) Merchant (Deals with short- and long-term sustainability issues)

Bard (Master of the lore, history, and politics of the field, know what's “out there”)

Artisan (Has materials production skills in all the necessary Web 1.0 and 2.0 tools like HTML, video sharing, podcasting)

Monk (Master of copyright and licensing arcana and defender of the university brand)

Merchant (Deals with short- and long-term sustainability issues)

Education Will Eventually Be Open And involve connecting, personalizing, and creating - just like everything else does

Will Higher Education Be Open? Can your school find the institutional will to change?

Institutional Disaggregation MIT OpenCourseWare, Western Governors University

Value of Integration? As compared to “specialized pieces loosely joined”

Not a Technology Problem Look around the Internet – not only do the technologies we need exist, they’re open source

This Is a Policy Problem Higher education is behaving like the recording and movie industries

Policy To Defend Tradition Rather than innovating

You Must Engage in Policy Reform Ignoring the growing problem is not a strategy

“ It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” W. E. Deming

“ You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller

Student Learning May Suffer The market will likely meet students’ increasingly unmet needs

Your Employment Will Suffer When your institution collapses as Googlers find better alternatives

“ The last temptation is the greatest treason, To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” Archbishop Thomas Beckett (T. S. Eliot)

Innovate for the Students To fulfill your sacred trust as a teacher

Thank You! [email_address] http://davidwiley.org/