AUDIO | Looking to the newspaper industry to understand higher education’s transformation — from evoLLLution.com by Byron White | Vice President for University Engagement, Cleveland State University
Except (emphasis DSC):
One of the lessons I do think can be learned is really tailoring a focus to individual students … and moving more toward a reader-driven kind of format, where you really are having to pay attention to individuals who are coming, each one, and having to customize and personalize what they are looking for.
The other thing I think [is] a lesson to learn is to really be focused on the outcomes those individual users … are looking for. I don’t think the newspaper industry ever really redefined the kind of outcome or value newspapers were providing to readers, other than providing them with the news of the day. You know, the New York Times, “All the news that’s fit to print.” In reality, what we should have been shifting toward was helping people make sense and navigate their lives and their worlds. And I think we started talking that way, but we never really developed the evidence we were really helping people do that.
Higher education can learn from that. If we can move from providing students [with] knowledge, information, even a credential, to seeing ourselves as being in the business of developing people to have lifelong success … I think we’ll start to see the ways we provide that might be different than just the traditional ways of sharing knowledge.
That’s a lesson we can learn from what newspapers, I think, weren’t able to transition to.
3. The move to free online content significantly changed journalism, both in terms of the value readers put into written news and their expectations for accessibility and speed of reporting. What kind of an impact do you see the growth of online learning having on students’ expectations of higher education?