Digital technology’s impacts on higher education are destined to be pervasive and persistent. We need to understand better this Protean beast so we can appreciate its power and possibilities.
For residential liberal arts institutions like William and Mary — where engaged learning is very much our ethos — how do we preserve and improve high-touch education in the current climate? To what question is e-learning the answer?
First, let’s acknowledge that we don’t know a lot about the digital revolution. We don’t know the pace or direction of changes e-learning will bring about; we can’t predict “winners” and “losers.”
We do know a few things, though.
We know — or at least I’m willing to assert — that the analogies used to describe the impact of e-learning on higher education — steel mills, newspapers, the music industry — are wrong. The narrative goes like this: Successful industry becomes complacent, ignores onset of disruptive innovation, suffers precipitous decline. But the academy is not a steel mill. We are a service industry that provides something universally desired and/or needed for success.
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For higher education, a more apt comparison is health care. Highly complex and expensive, with costs rising more rapidly than the overall economy, health care also relies heavily on third-party payers and enjoys huge demand as a necessity.
Secondly, medical doctors and the professoriate are both highly skilled, (traditionally) well respected and (again, traditionally) independent groups.
Finally, within each industry, the respect and autonomy for its practitioners have been undermined by external forces.
These external dynamics are familiar throughout academia: the ongoing high rate of increase in educational cost; a stagnant economy; the myth of the student debt crisis; the need to expand access; political anxiety (and demagoguery); and greater scrutiny from foundations, agencies and the public.
Into this mix add the massive improvements in electronic communications. These possibilities, embodied most fully in the acronym MOOC (massive open online course), are intriguing and, for many, seem to answer our problems by promising efficiency, decreased costs, improved quality and expanded access. If only it were so simple!
An excruciatingly brief survey of the various large goals of e-learning efforts is worthwhile.
• Enhanced instruction: Technology has changed the infrastructure of instruction. The “platform” has become enriched — and generally more expensive. Beyond improving student learning, technology has made things more convenient, but these improvements do not necessarily “fall to the bottom line.”
• Enhanced revenues: Until recently, programs that generated revenue were largely offered by non-elite institutions. Now, many top schools enter this space. Four caveats: 1) Programs (not individual courses) generate revenue; 2) “profitable” programs tend to be in technical areas; 3) start-up costs can be considerable; and 4) this space becomes more crowded every day.
• Access: MOOCs are exciting. Reaching thousands of students of limited means or mobility is heady and laudatory. But assessing student learning poses challenges and financial models remain hazy. The cost to set up a middling MOOC is $250,000 — plus hundreds of hours in course development.
• Reducing costs: There is still little evidence relating cost reduction to improved learning. The upper end of higher education pursues excellence, regardless of cost, and is fiercely competitive for students, faculty, staff, research funding, philanthropic dollars, etc.
Keep in mind also that “instructional costs” are only a fraction of the cost of higher education. A serious look at reducing the cost of higher education must consider more broadly its many cost-drivers.
Where does this leave William and Mary?
First, we should embrace our fundamental competitive advantage: high-quality, high-touch engagement of students in the excitement of learning and discovery.
Next, we need to experiment in appropriate areas of e-learning. It would be a mistake to attempt a leading role in the digital revolution — but we do need to engage, for several reasons:
1) Universities are sites of innovation; 2) we stand to reap collateral benefits to improve conventional or hybrid formats of instruction; 3) we need new revenues and/or ways of containing costs to sustain high-touch education; 4) students increasingly expect e-learning to be part of their education; and 5) external pressures require it.
We often support our claim of distinctiveness with a “one size doesn’t fit all” argument. Not all classes can be seminar-style, even at William and Mary. But, by focusing on intellectual engagement among faculty and students, investigating novel modes of enhanced technologies and by strategic adaptation and integration of these modes, we can develop the new gold standard of contemporary higher education.
Michael R. Halleran is provost of the College of William and Mary. This column is based on remarks he made to William and Mary’s Board of Visitors.