The first part of this three-part series discussed changes occurring in
the way we define learning, changes having as their source the nexus of
our increasingly diverse collective student body, the widespread
availability of powerful information technologies, and our growing
sophistication about how our students learn. The second part described
the need to create new ways of delivering higher education that overcome
the shortcomings of our current one-size-fits-all approach to teaching--
what we at Educom are calling a national learning infrastructure (NLI).
The choice of the word infrastructure is deliberate. It suggests the
need for new arrangements--among institutions; among institutions and
corporations; and among institutions, corporations, and public policy
makers--to undergird a technology-mediated environment in which the
learner can thrive. How do we create this new learning infrastructure?
What strategies offer the most promise? What obstacles stand in the way?
Calls for changing current teaching practice are widespread. Today it is
difficult to attend a meeting or a conference in higher education
without hearing someone either extolling the virtues of using
technology in teaching or praising the value of alternative
instructional methods. Recently, for example, the interim chancellor of
the State University of New York predicted that "catastrophe is certain
if education--both higher and lower--becomes obsolete as it clings to a
talking technology for teaching that its own researchers describe as
ineffective and inefficient. . . . Incrementalism--the favored course
for change in academia--will no longer work. We need nothing less than a
transformation of faculty teaching and student learning." Yet despite
broad support for these ideas, their implementation remains marginal to
the mainstream teaching and learning activities on our campuses.
During the past decade or so, a variety of technology-mediated learning
environments have emerged, including stand-alone, computer-assisted
instruction (CAI) applications; networked information resources;
experimentation via new modes of communication (e.g., computer
conferencing); and distance learning developed by both individual
institutions and consortial or statewide efforts and offered primarily,
though not exclusively, via television.
These new technology-mediated learning environments illustrate possible
solutions to higher education's problems, but they do so in a piecemeal
fashion. Some increase access (e.g., distance learning and networked
resources) and some improve quality (e.g., multimedia, interactive
learning applications) but few control costs. Instead, most of these
applications bolt on to the traditional classroom structure, thereby
adding to the cost of instruction.
Ever since higher education became a mass phenomenon, colleges and
universities have made significant use of cost control measures. The
200-seat lecture hall, graduate student teaching assistants, adjunct
faculty, and the like exist for purposes of controlling costs rather
than improving educational quality. Because they tend to mirror their
on-campus counterparts, distance-learning applications that extend the
classroom via telecommunications do a reasonable job of controlling
costs. But even though decades of educational research have proven that
these approaches are "as good as" the face-to-face classroom, they fail
to improve on the inherent limitations of the lecture method, thereby
sacrificing quality. Clearly, it is not difficult to meet one of higher
education's goals of increased access, controlled costs, or improved
quality by itself. The trick is to find a way to achieve all three at
once.
A Strategic Response
A national learning infrastructure (NLI) represents, in essence, an
alternative learning environment or, to use today's hottest clichˇ, a
new paradigm for teaching and learning. When implemented, an NLI will
simultaneously increase access (via the network), improve quality
(through the availability of individualized, interactive learning
materials), and contain costs (by reducing labor intensity in
instruction). To achieve these goals, we must first create an advanced
technological infrastructure, and we must stimulate the production of
high-quality content materials.
Building Advanced Networks
To realize the vision of an information age pedagogical model in which
learning can occur anytime and anyplace, we must have a robust national
information infrastructure (NII)--an advanced, broadband network--as
proposed by the Clinton-Gore Administration.
Why is the network so essential? After all, we can point to many
examples of stand-alone, self-paced, immersion learning applications
that improve educational quality. But the problem is that they stand
alone: in one class, in one room, at one institution. They are neither
replicable nor scalable. As long as students have to go to a lab, as
long as faculty have to move equipment to a space separate from where
they work and from where students learn, logistical problems will
continue to dominate. In a nonnetworked environment, the need for staff
to manage the process creates further obstacles: either there are not
enough support staff to do the job, or the costs of providing sufficient
staff are prohibitive.
By contrast, Internet-based applications such as e-mail, gopher, and
mosaic servers are widely diffused in higher education. The Internet,
forerunner of the NII, represents new possibilities in communication,
collaboration, and delivery. But until today's limited-bandwidth
Internet expands to a widely accessible broadband network, stand-alone
approaches, with their attendant logistical problems, will continue to
present a significant obstacle.
Creating New Instructional Materials
Peter Drucker has pointed out that in order for a new technology to be
successful, it must do the old job 10 times better. This makes a lot of
sense to me. When we think of successful deployments of technology in
higher education, such as word processing, electronic mail, course
registrations, and electronic card catalogs, it becomes clear that each
"does the job" at least 10 times better than what it has replaced. By
comparison, currently no instructional software application at the
collegiate level comes even close to meeting Drucker's requirement. A
national learning infrastructure requires the creation and widespread
availability of high-quality, self-paced learning materials.
Such materials must have two fundamental characteristics: they must be
modularized into small components, and they must include assessment of
student learning. Modularization is necessary in order to respond
flexibly to individual learning needs and preferences, thus improving
the quality of learning. And the learning modules must be available in a
variety of formats that correspond to differences in individual learning
styles. Via the network, students should be able to access the learning
modules they need, whenever and wherever they need them, and to take as
much or as little time as necessary to complete the learning required.
As a strategy, modularization offers advantages beyond responsiveness to
students. A national body of learning materials, if modularized, can be
used flexibly by individual institutions. Modularization avoids the
whole course problem, with its attendant difficulties of gaining
agreement among diverse faculty and institutions about appropriate
content. The best example of how a national body of learning materials
might be created can be found within the CUPLE project in physics.
Participating physicists create instructional modules according to an
agreed-upon standard. The modules are reviewed by national peers before
they become part of the body of material. Thus, both creators and users
are assured of consistency and quality, and the result is a growing body
of instructional materials that can be used in diverse settings.
A second characteristic of effective instructional materials is the
integration of student learning assessment. Built-in assessment
accomplishes two objectives: it facilitates individualization of
learning, thereby improving quality, and it reduces faculty
intervention, thereby containing costs. First, students need to be
assessed to determine how they best learn. Next, students must be
assessed to find out what they already know. Throughout the learning
process, students need to be assessed to find out how much they have
learned. Finally, students must be assessed once they have completed the
material in order to certify that learning has happened. No teacher-
based learning environments are able to individualize the learning
process in this way. Again and again, the literature argues that ability
to individualize the learning process represents perhaps the greatest
potential of computer-based learning. The problem is that few computer-
based materials currently in existence include even some of the four
stages of assessment; none includes all. Despite all the talk, despite
all the anticipation, we have yet to see college-level learning products
that fulfill the promise.
Result: Alternative
Learning Environments
Approximately 80 percent of the costs to colleges and universities are
attributable to personnel costs; consequently, controlling costs means
reducing the direct, personal intervention of faculty when possible in
the teaching and learning process. The availability of a vast quantity
of learning materials easily accessible via the network will make
possible the creation of new kinds of learning environments. By
lessening the need for direct faculty intervention in the learning
process and by increasing the ability of students to find and use
learning materials on their own, we can create more-cost-effective
instruction.
Strategies for Development
The Clinton-Gore Administration has championed a strategy for developing
the NII that relies on collaboration between the public and private
sectors. So too, the development of a national learning infrastructure
will depend on a collaborative effort among those in four key sectors:
(1) higher education leaders, (2) public policy makers, (3) publishers,
and (4) digital companies. The first two have responsibility for
creating a climate that promotes the effective use of networked learning
materials in new learning environments. The second two have the
capability of creating and distributing the materials to be used in the
new learning environments. Without the materials, there will be no
learning infrastructure; without a receptive market, there will be no
substantial investment by the private sector in the development of an
NLI.
Need for Leadership in Higher Education
In his book Future Edge, Joel Arthur Barker makes a relevant distinction
between management and leadership: you manage within a paradigm, but you
lead between paradigms. Most of higher education's leadership is
managing within today's teaching and learning paradigm when what we
desperately need is leadership that moves us toward tomorrow's paradigm.
Speeches will not do the job; words are not enough. It is time for
higher education's leaders to step up to the plate and bat.
Administrators love to blame the faculty for their inability to bring
about change. But it is clear that the changes most needed to create a
learning infrastructure must take place at the institutional level.
Individual faculty members can conduct individual experiments that point
the way to systemic change, but they cannot make significant, systemic
changes by themselves. Furthermore, in many cases, faculty have little
control over the institutional factors that inhibit creation of
alternative learning environments, such as class meeting times, contact-
hour requirements, registration systems, classroom assignments, and
equipment purchase and deployment.
The weakness of focusing on individual faculty members as a strategy for
change can be demonstrated by assessment of two approaches to
stimulating new learning environments at the national level. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) curriculum reform program has spent
literally millions of dollars on awards to individual faculty members
with a view toward improving individual courses at individual
institutions. Similarly, in the 1980s, IBM also spent millions funding
more than 3,000 individual faculty projects in its Advanced Education
Projects. Both the NSF and IBM meant well, but both of their programs
failed to achieve results beyond the individual classroom.
By comparison, the NSF's advanced networking program began with the
vision of a national high-speed communications network, and it leveraged
federal dollars to stimulate public/private partnerships to build it.
That strategic approach led to the creation of the Internet as we know
it today. Higher education needs to begin with a clear vision of what it
is trying to accomplish in the field of technology-mediated learning.
Too often, discussions about the integration of technology and
instruction begin with the question, Why hasn't it worked? This is
usually followed by, How can we get them to use it? Technology is an
enabling mechanism; it is not an end in itself. And until institutional
leaders can clearly state why we want "them" to use "it," or what we
want them to use it for, we will fail to make significant progress.
Need for Changes in Public Policy
Public policy makers play a major role in creating a climate for change.
Regional accrediting associations, specialized professional and
disciplinary associations, presidential associations, and library
associations all create and advance the standards affecting the teaching
and learning environment. One of the largest inhibitors to creation of
new technology-mediated learning environments lies in our current
definition of academic quality. Quality in higher education is defined
primarily by measuring institutional inputs, namely, the number of full-
time faculty, the number of books in the library, the number of students
in a class, and the amount of contact between students and faculty. In
this equation, size of budget corresponds to level of institutional
prestige. The creation of an NLI requires a new definition of quality
based on the achievement of learning outcomes regardless of how those
outcomes are achieved.
When we move to the public policy arena, we find regulations and funding
formulas based on this paradigm of quality, this time in the form of
full-time-equivalent counts, contact-hour definitions, and financial aid
requirements. Each of these policy positions reinforces the idea of
credit for contact. The fact that distance-learning students are
frequently ineligible for various kinds of federal and state financial
aid is indicative of the problem. Alternatives to the credit-for-contact
standard do exist, and outcome-based standards need to become the rule
rather than the exception. We need to create at the public policy level
a better framework for stimulating new approaches to instruction and for
measuring institutional effectiveness.
Partnerships with Publishers and Digital Companies
Without the systematic involvement of the publishing and digital
industries, the ad hoc application of technology to learning by
individual faculty and institutions will remain the norm. The
difficulties of sustaining ongoing product development and consistent
quality control under these circumstances are virtually insurmountable.
And therefore the involvement of those whose business is the
development, production, distribution, and marketing of educational
products is critical to the development of an NLI.
At the same time, we need to help those industries develop a strategic
understanding of how to create a market for their products. Currently,
content experts and their publishers rely on hard-coded approaches to
developing software for learners. Such approaches do not scale, however;
that is, the resulting materials do not readily transfer across hardware
platforms, operating systems, networks, and institutions. As Bill Graves
noted in a recent issue of Educom Review, the Internet succeeds
precisely because of its nonproprietary, open-systems approach to
networking. No one owns the Internet's transport and middleware
standards and protocols, but many profit from them. Similarly, the
creation of a national learning infrastructure requires a
nonproprietary, system-independent approach.
The need for standards and common protocols is catalyzing new
partnerships almost weekly in the digital industry. That partnership
philosophy must be extended into the educational arena, making it
possible for many operating system companies and telecommunication
companies to participate in development activities.
The Challenge
This series began by observing that our current system of higher
education--developed to serve a different student population from the
one we now have--is cracking under the strain of meeting new learning
demands. The system is based on old assumptions about teaching and
learning and on old technologies that have outlived their usefulness.
Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citibank, once said, "The job of
management is to create wealth, not to allocate shortages." Higher
education's administrators have spent the most recent period in our
collective history allocating shortages. Without creative approaches to
the cost/quality/access nexus, our colleges and universities will
continue to flounder. We need a better system of learning so as to
enable students to acquire knowledge.
It is time to turn our attention to creating something new. It is time
to move beyond the walls of our individual colleges and universities in
order to join forces with other institutions, with corporations, and
with public policy makers and revitalize American higher education.
Together we can create wealth. Together we can create a national
learning infrastructure that will serve the learning needs of our nation
as we enter the 21st century.
Carol A. Twigg is vice president of Educom. twigg@educom.edu