Embracing failure to spur success: A new collaborative innovation model — from educause.com by Kim Wilcox and Edward Ray

Excerpt:

The implied message is clear: We’d prefer not to talk about what isn’t working at the postsecondary level.

We’re in a competitive sector, and there is misplaced pressure on all higher education institutions to achieve top placement in U.S. News & World Report and other annual rankings, regardless of whether or not those rankings make any sense. We all feel significant pressure to make sure that our constituents—from board members to faculty to parents to legislators—are happy with the direction of the institution. And we also know that those constituents can be impatient in waiting for substantive change to produce positive results. Honest discourse on new initiatives that seem unproductive or in need of modification is likely to lead to unpleasant conversations that few of us would relish.

This is not the way to foster innovation and improvement in higher education. The best innovators in the world typically follow the mantra that failure is acceptable, helpful, and sometimes even necessary to ultimately achieving an objective. Many of the products we rely on today, from Post-it Notes to pacemakers, resulted from mistakes or failures in the search for other innovations. And just about any founder of a successful Silicon Valley start-up has a track record of ventures that failed.

Successful innovation requires experimentation and learning from failure.

At the University of California, Riverside, and Oregon State University, we are engaged in one effort to achieve these goals: the University Innovation Alliance. The UIA is a consortium of eleven major public research universities that are working together to identify new solutions to challenges found throughout the higher education community, and then to share information about failures and successful solutions among institutions.

 

From DSC:
Some images that are along these lines:

 

RealEstate-HigherEd-DanielSChristian11-1-13

 

 

TheTrimtabInHigherEducation-DanielChristian

 

Private Giveaway — from insidehighered.com –by Ry Rivard
Private college in Iowa gives itself to the University of Iowa rather than be forced out of business 

Excerpt:

Leaders at the AIB College of Business in Iowa took a look at the future of their small private college and decided to shut down and donate the campus to the University of Iowa.

AIB’s decision, made back in January, is similar in some respects to one made a few weeks later by leaders at Sweet Briar College, a 700-student women’s college in rural Virginia, that announced it plans to close this year.

At AIB, officials figured they would close down before they were forced out of business.

 

Corinthian Colleges Closing — from huffingtonpost.com

Addendum 5/1/15 re: Corinthian Colleges:

  • For-Profit Corinthian Colleges Goes Out Of Business – from buzzfeed.com by
    Some 16,000 students at Everest Colleges and other schools will be affected.
    Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
    Corinthian Colleges, the embattled for-profit college company, announced Sunday that it is ceasing operations, immediately shuttering all of its 28 remaining campuses. The abrupt closure is unprecedented in size: on Monday, some 16,000 students at Corinthian’s Everest, Heald, and Wyotech College chains, most of them in California, will have no school to attend.

 

California Attorney General Kamala Harris | Eric Risberg / Via AP Photo

 

See Bryan Alexander’s list of Queen Sacrifices including Elmhurst College makes a queen sacrifice (3/1/15)

 

Sweet Briar will close — from insidehighered.com by Scott Jaschik

Excerpt:

Sweet Briar College announced today that it is shutting down at the end of this academic year.

Small colleges close or merge from time to time, more frequently since the economic downturn started in 2008. But the move is unusual in that Sweet Briar still has a $94 million endowment, regional accreditation and some well-respected programs. But college officials said that the trend lines were too unfavorable, and that efforts to consider different strategies didn’t yield any viable options. So the college decided to close now, with some sense of order, rather than dragging out the process for several more years, as it could have done.

Paul G. Rice, board chair, said in an interview that he realized some would ask, “Why don’t you keep going until the lights go out?”

But he said that doing so would be wrong. “We have moral and legal obligations to our students and faculties and to our staff and to our alumnae. If you take up this decision too late, you won’t be able to meet those obligations,” he said. “People will carve up what’s left — it will not be orderly, nor fair.”

 

Closing with grace — from insidehighered.com by Alice Brown

 Excerpt:

The closing of Sweet Briar College will, I expect, have little impact on other small, private, rural colleges with small endowments. Most will keep their heads in the sand, live on in a state of denial and continue to produce strategic plans that say little more than “Hope.”

 

 

Addendum on 3/17/15:

Excerpt:
Tennessee Temple University, after almost 70 years in operation in Highland Park, is set to close after this semester.

Trustees are set to vote on Tuesday morning to merge Temple with Piedmont International University of Winston-Salem, N.C. Students who are not graduating this semester would have the option to continue their education there. Bryan College in Dayton, Tn., and Shorter College at Rome, Ga., would be other options.

The merger with Piedmont will officially take place on April 30, pending the approval of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools which is the accrediting body for both universities.

 

Addendum on 3/19/15:

 

Addendum on 3/20/15:

 

Addendums on 4/6/15:

 

 

EducauseModelForITLeadership1-March2015

 

Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader. Research report. Jisc and EDUCAUSE, March 2015.

Abstract:

Information technology is so much the fabric of the university that its presence is often not fully recognized. The focus in the IT organization has shifted from a tactical to a strategic perspective. With the demand for IT only growing, understanding how IT leaders can best lead in these efforts is essential.

In early 2014, EDUCAUSE and Jisc came together to address a common concern: Understanding the skills required by technology leaders in higher education was an issue often overlooked and one needing immediate attention. The two organizations convened a working group of 10 leading U.S. and U.K. IT leaders to define a set of desired technology leadership characteristics and capabilities, now and in the future. This report identifies 10 key roles played by the IT leaders, describes what each of these roles entails, and outlines the essential skills required to perform them.

 

EducauseModelForITLeadership-March2015

 

 

The higher education information technology (IT) enterprise has become complex. No longer simply responsible for provisioning IT infrastructure and services, the IT department increasingly helps re-envision business and service models—all in a context of cost and accountability pressures.

 

 

From DSC:
It’s good to see the emphasis on strategy and the strategic use of technologies — especially given the increasingly important role that technologies are playing throughout the majority of — if not all — industries in existence today (not to mention the exponential curve we’re on vs. a gradual/linear trajectory).  This is true within higher ed as well, as new alternatives/models/methods continue to creep up on traditional institutions of higher ed.

 

 

Adaptivity Tops Gartner’s Strategic Tech List for Ed — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

Even as education spending is projected to inch up two percent this year to reach $67.8 billion worldwide, the way in which school districts, colleges and universities are spending that money is evolving to reflect the growing digital nature of teaching and learning, according to Gartner. In a new report, “Top 10 Strategic Technologies Impacting Education in 2015,” the business IT consulting firm ranked 10 innovations and tech trends that it believes the education CIO should plan for in 2015.

Many of the technologies aren’t emerging from within education itself, said Gartner Vice President Jan-Martin Lowendahl. They’re being “driven by major forces such as digital business and the consumerization and industrialization of IT.”

1. Adaptive Learning
2. Adaptive Digital Textbooks
3. CRM
4. Big Data
5. and 6. Sourcing Strategies and ‘Exostructure’
7. Open ‘Microcredentials’
8. Digital Assessment
9. Mobile
10. Social Learning

 

My thanks to Mary Grush at Campus Technology for her continued work in bringing relevant topics and discussions to light — so that our institutions of higher education will continue delivering on their missions well into the future. By doing so, learners will be able to continue to partake of the benefits of attending such institutions. But in order to do so, we must adapt, be responsive, and be willing to experiment. Towards that end, this Q&A with Mary relays some of my thoughts on the need to move more towards a team-based approach.

When you think about it, we need teams whether we’re talking about online learning, hybrid learning or face-to-face learning. In fact, I just came back from an excellent Next Generation Learning Space Conference and it was never so evident to me that you need a team of specialists to design the Next Generation Learning Space and to design/implement pedagogies that take advantage of the new affordances being offered by active learning environments.

 

DanielSChristian-CampusTechologyMagazine-2-24-15

 

DanielSChristian-CampusTechologyMagazine2-2-24-15

 

 

 

 

The future of work
There’s an app for that — from economist.com
Freelance workers available at a moment’s notice will reshape the nature of companies and the structure of careers 

 

 

Excerpt:

HANDY is creating a big business out of small jobs. The company finds its customers self-employed home-helps available in the right place and at the right time. All the householder needs is a credit card and a phone equipped with Handy’s app, and everything from spring cleaning to flat-pack-furniture assembly gets taken care of by “service pros” who earn an average of $18 an hour.

Handy is one of a large number of startups built around systems which match jobs with independent contractors on the fly, and thus supply labour and services on demand.

The obvious inspiration for all this is Uber, a car service which was founded in San Francisco in 2009 and which already operates in 53 countries; insiders say it will have sales of more than $1 billion in 2014.

This boom marks a striking new stage in a deeper transformation. Using the now ubiquitous platform of the smartphone to deliver labour and services in a variety of new ways will challenge many of the fundamental assumptions of 20th-century capitalism, from the nature of the firm to the structure of careers.

The on-demand economy will inevitably exacerbate the trend towards enforced self-reliance that has been gathering pace since the 1970s. Workers who want to progress will have to keep their formal skills up to date, rather than relying on the firm to train them (or to push them up the ladder regardless). This means accepting challenging assignments or, if they are locked in a more routine job, taking responsibility for educating themselves. They will also have to learn how to drum up new business and make decisions between spending and investment.

 

Also see:

Professional Millennials and super-powered smartphones are changing the working world — from medium.com and Liquid Talent

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

 This is the year when modern technology squarely intersects with the economy and the workforce. This is the the year that marks a noted change in how we work as individuals, and as a collective. This is the year of the Millennial Generation takeover in our professional world. This is the year that marks the beginning of the Independent Workforce Revolution.

Why?

Two reasons:

1) Millennials take over
Millennials are the largest generation at 82 million strong. They do not have the same priorities as past generations and their professional incentives are quickly changing. They care less about maximizing profit, finding a secure job and taking 2.5 weeks of vacay. In fact, 54% of Millennials assert that they want to start a company one day, or already have. This generation is now 50% of the workforce, and will be 75% of the workforce by 2020. These percentages may seem staggering but with 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring everyday (every single day!) we can see this tectonic shift happening before our very eyes.

2) Mobile technology
We have our economies in our pocket. We can work anytime from anywhere, and source professional opportunities with a simple swipe. The proliferation of mobile productivity apps (ie Slack), globalized workforce platforms (ie eLance) and professional networks (ie LinkedIn) show the power and growth in professional, mobile technologies.

 

From DSC:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again to those of us working in K-12 and in higher education:

We need to be sure that we’re preparing our students to know how to run their own businesses. They need to know how to survive and thrive as freelancers — because chances are they will be freelancing at various points in their career. Our curricula should already be in the process of being updated to address these critical skills. More courses on entrepreneurship for example; also some basic accounting courses as well as coursework involving programming, brainstorming, marketing, and how to use various technologies to collaborate, stay organized, and manage one’s time.

The above items also stress the need for lifelong, accessible/affordable learning; and for constant adaptation and for reinventing oneself in order to remain marketable in the workplace.

 

 

Addendum on 2/18/15:

New tech companies say freelancing is the future of work. But there’s a downside for workers. — from washingtonpost.com by Lydia DePillis
More companies are switching their workforce to freelance. Policy needs to catch up.

Excerpt:

If the nation’s way of regulating work revolves around a relationship between an employee and employer, what happens when that relationship no longer exists?

 

 

 

Is this the online learning model of the future? — from ecampusnews.com by Rony Zarom
Flex class options are seeing spikes in enrollment among Gen C students; here’s how to get started.

Excerpt:

“Flex-classes,” a preferred learning style among Gen Cs that offers “flex-attendance“ options to join classes “in-person” or “online” throughout the duration of a course, allowing students to more efficiently, and affordably, learn anytime, anywhere.

In fact, if the current enrollment growth rate continues, nearly half of all college students will be enrolled in a flexible online learning course by 2020.

Based on a cross-generational commonality to stay digitally connected and plugged into mobile devices, these two generations expect more accessible, technology-forward learning environments that give them the flexibility, mobility and freedom to learn when and where they want.

One of the biggest weather deterrents that disrupts student attendance and educators’ lesson plans is snow days, and thanks to virtual flex-class options, snow day disruptions may be coming to an end for good.

Schools around the country have been implementing flex-classes to allow students the option to join classes online on days they can’t make it to school, instead of making up the lost days at another time and often dipping deep into summer vacations. Students can tune in to their classrooms via mobile device or tablet to complete their learning initiatives for the day. The snow day approach is a realistic option for institutions looking to test the effectiveness of flex-class implementation.

 

From DSC:
This is an interesting approach.  What I like about it is that it provides more choice and more control for the student.

What I wonder about is how would this type of learning environment impact the pedagogies that a professor would need to employ…? Or are we not that far along here yet? That is, how does one simultaneously offer a productive online learning experience as well as an effective face-to-face learning experience?

Also, on a slight tangent here from this model…
I’ve been wondering about whether remote students could effectively/simultaneously come into a face-to-face classroom setting — and I think the answer is yes.  As with the corporate world, teams are scattered throughout a nation or from various places throughout the globe — and yet work gets done. Projects get done. Collaboration happens. Learning happens.

Some institutions, including the college where I work at, are experimenting with using telepresence robots to bring in those remote students. The version 2.0’s and above of these robots may be an option.  However, I’m wondering if a better option might be available if a vendor could morph something like Cisco’s StadiumVision into an educational setting…? That is, provide 3-4 camera angles/perspectives per classroom and let the remote learners switch between viewing angles on their end of things…? Such as setup would be very interesting to experiment with.

Also, in regards to learning spaces, should one wall be dedicated to bringing in remote students? That is, one of the walls could display who all is coming into a classroom remotely so that they could be a part of the discussions and so that the F2F students could see and interact w/ those remote students.

Finally, might these ideas dovetail into the idea of providing learning hubs — where Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) could be synchronously or asynchronously presenting information (in a digital/virtual manner) and leading a discussion for those who are seated and learning together in a physical setting? 

 

 

From DSC:
It seems like there’s been an increase in the number of “boot camps” that I’m seeing — below are some examples:


 

12week-boot-camp-data-scientist

 

 

 

 

UX-10-WeekImmersiveTraining-OCt2014

 

 

 

 

FlatironSchool

 

 

 

 

.

PayWhatYouWantBootcamp-Jan2015

 

 

 

 

ElevenFifty-CodingAcademy-Jan2015

 

 

 

 

New MOOC Platform Provides Free IT Certification Courses — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

 

 

Cybrary-IT-Jan2015

 

 

 

People offering their own bootcamps / building their own brands; such as this Two Week Web Development Bootcamp for Beginners by Adam Stanford.

 

 

 


Some other approaches that are occurring:


 

Ideo U

IDEO-Online-EducationBeta-Oct2014

 

Yieldr Academy

YieldrAcademy-Sept2014

Lessons Go Where

LessonsGoWhere

 

ClassDo

ClassDo

 

Udemy

udemy

 

C-Suite TV.com

MYOB-July2014

 

 

Simon & Schuster to sell online courses taught by popular authors — from nytimes.com by Alexandra Alter; with thanks to Sidneyeve Matrix for her Tweet on this

Excerpt:

Simon & Schuster is making a push into paid online video, with a new website offering online courses from popular health, finance and self-help authors.

The cost of the first batch of online courses ranges from $25 to $85, and includes workbooks and access to live question-and-answer sessions with three authors: Dr. David B. Agus, the best-selling author of “The End of Illness”; Zhena Muzyka, who wrote the self-help book “Life by the Cup”; and Tosha Silver, the author of the spiritual advice book “Outrageous Openness.” The courses will be available on the authors’ individual websites and on the company’s new site, SimonSays.

.

 

Simon-Schuster-OnlineCourses-Jan2015

But there is a new wave of online competency-based learning providers that has absolutely nothing to do with offering free, massive, or open courses. In fact, they’re not even building courses per se, but creating a whole new architecture of learning that has serious implications for businesses and organizations around the world.

It’s called online competency-based education, and it’s going to revolutionize the workforce.

The key distinction is the modularization of learning.

Here’s why business leaders should care: the resulting stackable credential reveals identifiable skillsets and dispositions that mean something to an employer. As opposed to the black box of the diploma, competencies lead to a more transparent system that highlights student-learning outcomes.

 

 


From DSC:
Though several of the items above have a slant towards IT/coding/programming, other disciplines may be impacted by these types of trends as well.

These developments are meant for consideration for those of us working within higher education. What do they mean for us? Should they inform more of our strategies? Our visions? Our responses?


 

Addendums on 2/17/15:

 

datasciencedojo-bootcamp-2015

 

 

 

 

Addendum on 3/27/15:

 

Addendum on 4/1/15 — with thanks to Mr. Cal Keen at Calvin College

 

CanvasDotNet-April2015

 

Addendum on 4/7/15:

  • Udemy alternatives for selling video courses online — from robcubbon.com
    Udemy is currently the leading online learning platform. Their top 10 instructors all made over $500,000 last year and the top earner makes over $8 million. I make $4000+ each month by selling courses on Udemy.

 

 

Addendum on 5/1/15:

worldacademy.tv

WorldAcademyDotTV-May2015

 

Addendum on 5/18/15:

  • 16 Startups Poised to Disrupt the Education Market — from inc.com by Ilan Mochari
    Colleges and universities are facing new competition for customers–students and their parents–from startups delivering similar goods (knowledge, credentials, prestige) more affordably and efficiently. Here’s a rundown of some of those startups.
 

Running your company at two speeds — from mckinsey.com by Oliver Bossert, Jürgen Laartz, and Tor Jakob Ramsøy
Digital competition may dictate a new organizational architecture in which emerging digital processes coexist with traditional ones.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The retailer’s board responded by creating a new budgeting and approval process in which projects supporting major digital strategic thrusts are now treated separately from the rest of the IT budget. Solutions like this, in our experience, are an effective means of addressing digital timing challenges. Many companies need to create a two-speed architecture—a fast speed for functions that address evolving customer experiences and must change rapidly, and a transaction speed for the remaining functions, where the pace of adjustment can remain more measured.

Make the digital dialogue more strategic
Solutions like the retailer’s work only if there is clear agreement on what constitutes a digital priority worthy of a fast speed. In our experience, that rarely happens, because far too often, the digital dialogue never becomes sufficiently strategic to galvanize top management. At the retailer, by contrast, top management brought its budgeting challenges to the board, which approved the new, two-speed ground rules. Top management has also begun revising its agenda to elevate the importance of discussing strategic technology initiatives, including comparisons between them and other major thrusts, such as entering new regions.

Achieving this level of dialogue often means changing mind-sets, such as the common one that IT spending is a “tax” required to “keep the lights on.” …Once it’s clear that certain types of technology spending are an investment in new business strategies, it becomes much easier to agree that the resulting initiatives should be implemented quickly.

Evolve the organization
When the IT organization is asked to release new digital functions on a faster deployment cycle, it requires new levels of agility and coordination that may require substantial organizational change.

 

 

Along these lines, see:

How administrators can enhance online learning programs — from ecampusnews.com by Meris Stansbury

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Studying the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), Hoey and other researchers from Crown College, Fresno Pacific University, and Trinity Christian College examined the impact of administrative structure and admins on the outcomes of online student enrollment, number of online programs, and efficiency of online operations.

What the study overwhelmingly found was that both admins and admin structure have significant influence, which could help “private colleges gain a foothold in the competitive online market.”

However, since around 2007, researchers have noted a move away from the fully-integrated model to one where online programs are operated and administered by an entirely separate academic division.

 

Top 10 IT Issues, 2015: Inflection Point — from educause.edu by Susan Grajek and the 2014–2015 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel
EDUCAUSE presents the top 10 IT issues facing higher education institutions this year. What is new about 2015? Nothing has changed. And everything has changed. Information technology has reached an inflection point.  Visit the EDUCAUSE top 10 IT issues web page for additional resources.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Change continues to characterize the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues in 2015. The pace of change seems not to be slowing but, rather, is increasing and is happening on many fronts. There is reason to believe that higher education information technology has reached an inflection point—the point at which the trends that have dominated thought leadership and have motivated early adopters are now cascading into the mainstream. This inflection point is the biggest of three themes of change characterizing the 2015 EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues.. A second dimension of change is the shifting focus of IT leaders and professionals from technical problems to business problems, along with the ensuing interdependence between the IT organization and business units. Underlying all this strategic change, the day-to-day work of the IT organization goes on. But change dominates even the day-to-day, where challenges are in some ways more complex than ever. This “new normal” is the third theme of change.

 

 

Top10ITIssues2015-Educause

 

 

Andy Grove, Intel’s former CEO, described a strategic inflection point as “that which causes you to make a fundamental change in business strategy.”

 

Bias: Why Higher Education is Mired in Inaction — from insidetrack.com by Marcel Dumestre

This contribution can be accessed from insidetrack.com’s Leadership Series, but the actual PDF is here.

Excerpts:

He identifies four biases that short-circuit this process, which he terms as generalized empirical method. All of these biases are not only at play in our individual lives, they also can determine how well organizations operate, even universities.

The first bias is dramatic bias—a flight from the drama of everyday living, an inability or unwillingness to pay attention to experience.

The second bias is individual bias—egoism. Making intelligent decisions requires moving beyond the worldview created by oneself for oneself.

The third bias is group bias. This predisposition is particularly rampant in organizational life.

The fourth bias is general bias—the bias of common sense. This bias views common sense uncritically.


The deleterious effect of bias explains why very smart people don’t understand what seems obvious in hindsight. The disappearance of entire industries gives testimony to the destructive power of institutional blindness.

There is no magic formula, no uniform model to follow. Universities must do the hard work of analyzing the needs of whom they serve and recreate themselves as viable, exciting institutions suited for a new age.

The universities left standing decades from now will have gone through this enlightening, but painful, process and look in hindsight at the insight they achieved.

 

 

 

Addendum on 1/13/15:

 

Trend: Campuses moving from online to On-Demand — from ecampusnews.com by Meris Stansbury
Management expert discusses why the future for college campuses is on-demand, not just online

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

IT experts are calling it a super storm of forces that’s changing the way a campus ecosystem operates.

First, the very foundation of student expectations is changing, with requirements for education delivery models that are more flexible and accessible than those of generations past.

Second, the higher-ed market—thanks to the economy and possibilities available via technology—is reshaping itself under new requirements for competition, delivery, funding, and outcomes.

And it’s this super storm, say experts, that’s creating the need for new business processes and strategies to better compete and retain students.

 

 

CampusMgmt-Dec2014-SuperStorm

 

CampusMgmt2-Dec2014-SuperStorm

 

From DSC:
I don’t have data to back this up, but I also have it that student expectations are changing. (It would be great if someone out there who has some resources in this regard would post some links to such resources in the comments section.)  Anecdotally, the students’ expectations of today are different from when I attended college years ago. We didn’t have the Internet back then; we didn’t have personal computing devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops; we didn’t work collaboratively; there were no online-based courses; we didn’t have nearly as many choices for learning at our disposal.

But taking cues from society at large and from the trends in computing, people want to connect and they want to do so on their terms — i.e., when it fits into their schedules. So I can see this sort of phenomenon picking up steam, at least for a significant subset of learners out there. In fact, it’s an underlying assumption I have in my Learning from the Living [Class] Room vision. Many of us will seek out training/education-on-demand types of resources throughout our careers — as we need them. Heutagogy, lifelong learning, and rhizomatic learning come to mind; so does the growth of Lynda.com and the growth of bootcamps/accelerated learning programs (such as flatironschool.com).

Finally, the concept of “learning hubs” is interesting in this regard, whereby a group of learners get together in a physical setting, but tap into online-based resources to help them learn about a topic/discipline.  Those online-based resources could be synchronous or asynchronous. But learners come together when it works into their schedules.

 

 

Future of the Campus in a Digital World — from campusmatters.net by Michael Haggans | November 2014

Excerpts from PDF (emphasis DSC):

In the digitally driven future of higher education, three-dimensional classroom spaces still will be needed. They won’t be used in the traditional manner and they won’t be the traditional kind. They will be bigger, flatter, faster and there will need to be fewer classrooms for the same number of students.

Classes that meet on campus will need additional area per student to accommodate interactive configurations, such as those allowing group work in the flow of the traditional class period. Typically these will be flat floors allowing easy configuration changes. At the same time, these rooms must be faster, with access to robust bandwidth.

Both physical and administrative adaptations will be required. While there will be more floor area per student when in class, the number of classroom hours per degree will drop, and all the while the expectation for digital transmission capability will continue to rise. To justify the required investment, institutions will have to rethink the administration of classroom scheduling to maximize effectiveness for students and faculty, and to achieve increased utilization. These are not new or easily managed issues for higher education. The accelerating move to online instruction will expose existing weaknesses of current systems and the benefits of more strategic investments and scheduling.

Digital Visible
From an institutional perspective, many of the implications of digital transformation are difficult to see, lost in a thicket of business issues presenting themselves with increasing urgency. Moreover, the changes induced by digital transformation are difficult to address through traditional facilities development and capital funding processes. These transformations are not about the need for a single new – or better – building, a campus student recreation center or teaching laboratory. 

This is about adjusting the performance of the whole campus to support a digitally transformed pedagogy and academic community.


Libraries have never been about books. They have always been about access to and use of information.

Make campus matter
With so much of higher education available in digital and largely asynchronous forms, the justification for a campus must derive from something more than “we have always done it this way.” Even at the most traditional institutions “on-campus time per degree” will decrease. This change in convention will make the support of increasingly limited face-to-face time of
strategic value, rather than an assumed byproduct of traditional campus life.

 

The New Leadership Challenge — from educause.edu by Michael Kubit

Excerpt:

These are not traditional IT leadership challenges: IT leaders must develop a new set of skills. Emotional and social intelligence, the ability to provide leadership through ambiguity, managing behavior as performance, and effective engagement of stakeholders are the critical skills for IT managers today.

Historically, the use of information technology focused largely on infrastructure and enterprise business applications. Today, IT organizations need to find ways to align more closely with the teaching, learning, and research missions of their respective institutions. Three of the EDUCAUSE Top Ten IT Issues for 2014 emphasize the support of technology in the teaching and learning mission. The remaining issues involve positioning information technology as a strategic asset to leverage as a vehicle for innovation.

The speed at which things change fundamentally, both within information technology and higher education, makes it clear that traditional approaches will not take us where we need to go. We need to develop organizations that are more networked and interconnected, that are flatter, flexible, and focused on outcomes. We need to develop learning organizations that can respond to both challenge and opportunity without managers playing the role of parent.

A great deal of evidence collected over several decades and significant research have identified the qualities and characteristics of effective leadership. As technologists, do we pay enough attention to the science of organizational development? Effective leadership is the key to solving the challenges and opportunities before us. No longer are the principles of emotional intelligence and organizational effectiveness reserved for senior leaders. These skills and competencies must become part of the core requirements for anyone in a leadership position. As an industry, we need to find ways to offer professional development for the most critical aspect of a manager’s tool kit — leading people.

 

The Architects of Online Learning: A Strategic Partnership for the Sustainability of Higher Education — from educause.edu by Robert Hansen

Excerpt:

The transformational impact of online education has profound implications for the sustainability of many traditional higher education institutions. As we all know, nontraditional students became the new majority well before the turn of the past century. More than 75 percent of today’s higher education students are nontraditional. As enrollments at many tuition-dependent institutions have declined, colleges and universities have turned to the adult market to stabilize their budgets. This means that having a clear vision for online education—the preferred format for so many working adults—has become a strategic imperative.

And yet, even though many college and university leaders acknowledge the value of serving adult and nontraditional students, it’s fair to say that serving these students continues, more often than not, to be marginal to the mission—a noble afterthought to the core enterprise of serving first-time, full-time residential students. In other words, today’s colleges and universities are still designed to serve yesterday’s students.

Whether or not higher education is the next bubble, it is clear that online education is creating winners and losers. In order to thrive—or, in some cases, to survive—many institutions (especially regional colleges and universities) must use online education as the foremost opportunity to reach new markets.

We propose a renewed partnership between those who are innovative with technology (IT professionals) and those who are innovative in creating new academic programs and ways of reaching new audiences (continuing and online educators). This partnership has become a strategic imperative: the technical has become entrepreneurial, and the entrepreneurial has become technical.

 

Changing role of the CLO — from business-standard.com by Gurprriet Singh

Excerpt:

The ownership for keeping skills and competencies sharpened will move to the employee. With the emergence of MOOCs, social media enabled knowledge and connections, which facilitate you to identify and appoint mentors across dimensions and distance, the role of L&D as the provider of knowledge and provider of resource is soon becoming extinct. Individuals need to own their own development and leverage the resources available in social media. Just recently, IBM cut salaries by 10 per cent, of employees who had not kept their skills updated.

As Jack Welch said, “If the rate of change inside your organisation is slower than the rate of change outside, the end is near”. In such a scenario, the thinking and orientation must shift from being able to manage change TO being able to change on a dime which means Dynamism. The role of L&D thus becomes key in influencing the above cultural pillars. And to do so, is to select for the relevant traits, focus on interventions that help hone those traits. Traits and skills are honed by Experience. And that brings me to the 70:20:10.

 

From DSC:
I think Gurprriet is right when he says that there’s a shift in the ownership of our learning.  We as individuals need to own our own development and leverage social media, MOOCs, online and/or F2F-based courses, other informal/on-the-job resources, our personal learning networks, and our Communities of Practice.  Given the pace of change, each of us needs to be constantly building/expanding our own learning ecosystems.  We need to be self-directed, lifelong learners (for me, this is where learning hubs and learning from our living rooms will also play a role in the future). One approach might be for those in L&D/corporate training-related functions to help employees know what’s out there — introduce them to the streams of content that are constantly flowing by. Encourage them to participate, teach them how to contribute, outline some of the elements of a solid learning ecosystem, create smaller learning hubs within a company.


 
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