This presentation looks at some of the issues and trends in technology that have emerged this year that some are saying will lead to the end of the traditional university and/or the traditional degree. Is 2013 the beginning of the end of the university, or the starting place for University 2.0? This was a plenary session at Rutgers University's OIRT’s 2012 Technology in Learning Showcase on December 12, 2012, sponsored by the Office of Instructional and Research Technology.

1. 2013: The Beginning
of the End
of the University?
Ken Ronkowitz

2. It’s the End of the University As We Know It
Are you surprised?
Who Sets the Curriculum?
What do we do with Big
Data?
What is the value of a
traditional degree?
MOOCs?
Where is the funding?
Or will it all be open & free?

3. Who is
Not necessarily
Always in classrooms
On(line) or on campuses
or for degrees
24/7
Learning

4. Who Sets the Curriculum

5. Cognitive theory will make learning analytics
systems more relevant and effective.
Students and instructors both benefit from
access to better information about the state of
learning.
Analytics is here is to stay. Higher education
cannot ignore it.
“Big Data is any data we don’t understand well enough to
computerize.” (George Strawn)
Big Data is fine-grained information
about student experiences, university processes
and emergent trends
(student learning, enrollment, course success, lifestyle, tech use)
that is generated as students and staff conduct normal business.

6. CIO
Constituent
Group
Funding
Strategies

7. X-MOOCs (Coursera, Edx)
Formal (traditional) course
M assive (maybe) structure and flow and relationship
O pen (sort of) between teacher/learner
O nline (yep) Content also formal, structured
teacher-provided.
C ourse (sort of) Learners expected to duplicate or
master what they are taught
C-MOOCs have a changed relationship between
teacher/learner
Distributed, chaotic, emergent.
Constructivist. Learners expected to create, grow, expand
domain and share personal sense-making through artifact-
creation
Centralized discussion, forum support and distributed learner-
created forums and spaces

8. What about the personal
computer, Internet, online
learning, and software and tools
(open & commercial) that let
students create & explore &
collaborate & share?

9. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
• Just last FALL 2011 Two Stanford computer science
faculty members started Coursera to offer classes
with the help of universities
• APRIL 2012 four universities signed on: Princeton,
University of Michigan, Stanford and Penn State
• JULY 2012 12 more universities signed agreements
with Coursera to provide courses California Institute
of Technology, Duke University, Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, UC San Francisco,
University of Edinburgh, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, University of Toronto, University of Virginia
and University of Washington…

10. Open: source - software - textbooks - courses - learning
OPEN

11. If you are not paying for the service,
It’s free!
then
YOU are the service

12. The end of
replaced by ?
certificates, badges, corporate endorsements,
“just” a desire to simply learn,
competency-based degrees 

13. Lumina and the Gates Northern Arizona University, is
Foundation held a meeting with developing three competency-
about 35 institutions that either based bachelor's degree programs,
do competency now or want to with Pearson as a partner.
Competency-Based Degrees
try it.
Southern New Hampshire College has proposed a competency-
based Associate degree program by seeking to directly assess
students’ competencies rather than mapping them to credit hours.
They have secured approval from their regional accreditor, the New
England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on
Institutions of Higher Education.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/01/competency-based-education-may-get-boost

14. Goddard’s low-residency semester format
comprises an intensive 8-day residency on campus,
& 16 weeks of independent work and self-reflection
in close collaboration with a faculty advisor.
Goddard College invented the low-residency model
in 1963 to meet the needs of adult students
with professional, family, and other obligations seeking
learning experiences with relevance
in real-world circumstances.

15. “During the next fifteen years, the way
we educate our children, and how we
think of education itself, will change in
fundamental ways.” ~ Tim Brady, co-founder
of Imagine K12, an incubator for tech companies focused on the K-12
market.
Big Ideas for K-12 Schools include reconsidering some
current fundamental assumptions:
o giving students grades
o partitioning them according to age
o proving competency
o high schools, and maybe even middle schools, will begin
to operate less like factories and more like colleges
o the ubiquity of high-technology will blur the distinction
between being in and out of school
bigthink.com/ideafeed/the-tech-ed-revolution-no-more-grades-or-division-by-age

16. Exaggerated warnings?
• The “death” of the novel,
theater, movies, broadcast
television, newspapers, print,
libraries, liberal arts,
record/music sales, CDs, DVDs,
software, computers
• Going paperless
• Tele-commuting
• Face-to-face education
theconversation.edu.au/the-university-campus-of-the-future-what-will-it-look-like-9769

17. Into the Future
Get
students Access:
through traditional
faster & college is
get them for an elite
ready to group
work (again)
Replacing the first Gaps
2 years of college
with an &
online/hybrid or Divides
high school Return
initiative or
Emerge

20. Ken Ronkowitz
kenneth.ronkowitz@njit.edu
@ronkowitz
serendipity35.net
ronkowitz.com