There's an interesting blog post up on Inside Higher Ed today, "5 Things Netflix Streaming Can Teach Higher Ed." It prompts us to look toward the future in considering what higher ed can and should look like, and to do that serious rethinking before, as the post puts it, someone else does it for us.
This call for broad rethinking seems to be the tenor of the discussion about higher ed these days, whether it's from philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation, which is encouraging designing education for the "Next Generation Learner," to Peter Smith's much-discussed book, Harnessing America's Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning.
What do you think? Are we as an institution, or even as an industry, forward-looking enough? Do you, as a faculty member, feel engaged in these discussions and able to do work that participates in moving us forward? Do you think these visions are even the correct direction for higher education to be moving?
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Jennifer: I believe the message for us is the same as the message for Netflix. Change or Die. I have a 10 year old grandson. One day his mother came home to find that he had set up their Wii to connect to their wireless router and was out on the internet looking for games. His expectations for learning will not be restricted to a classroom and a campus. He will also expect his teachers to be as fluent as he is in using evolving technology for his education. ELI is headed in the right direction. Using a virtual classroom such as Blackboard Collaborate is also headed in the right direction. However, the missing element is the universally accepted METRIC process. We need to be working now on some type of standard protocol (such as IDOL) for measuring learning in the new environment. Faculty acceptance will be the biggest problem.
Jim Shannon
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