This week I presented to our team at AgencyND about Mobile – what’s the deal and what’s coming. I call this the Mobile Horizon, as a nod to the Horizon Report which aims to inform higher education about the future technologies and their implications. Mobile is all the rage, and for good reason. View the presentation to learn why.
If higher education is to avoid a painful death in the coming decades I have a relatively simple plan: create an R&D process.
Executive leadership, the board, deans, and officers of the University must be aware of this effort. The goal isn’t survival – that’s playing defense and it’s easily compared to a number of industries that resisted change. The goal is to thrive in this shifting environment and create lasting, positive changes to the way your institution will do business in the future.
A number of Universities have established centers, institutes, or commissions dedicated to studying higher education. This seems like a logical place for the conversation about the future of higher ed to start.
Institutions should create such a center (or direct an existing one) for the purpose of studying how changing cultural forces act on higher education, the implications for the future, and ways to adapt to such change. These centers should aim high, but produce meaningful research to be applied in a real world setting. One excellent example of this is the University of Michigan’s Millenium Project, which states:
“Rather than being simply a think-tank where ideas are generated and studied, the Millennium Project is a do-tank where ideas lead to the actual creation of working models or prototypes to explore possible futures of the university.”
The Center should be staffed or led by visionaries, higher ed leaders, faculty, etc. They should ask questions like “what might higher ed look like in 50 years?” and “what if we weren’t able to charge tuition to attend our school?”
It doesn’t do you any good to have a theory about how to adapt. Ideas are worthless until they’re put into action. But ideas aren’t guaranteed to pay out – they are far more likely to fail than succeed. This department (or an extension of the center, if you like) must be empowered to develop prototypes based on the work generated by the Center.
Like any good skunkworks operation, the Workshop requires talented and creative people. This also requires funding and the understanding that not all projects will pan out. Fail early and fail often must be an acceptable motto for this crew.
On one hand, there’s academic freedom and the usual liberties afforded such pursuits in higher education. On the other, there’s some urgency: we’re facing (if not already in the midst of) a looming crisis. Accountability is important if we’re to benefit from such investments in our future. This means setting reasonable goals and measuring projects (as well as these departments) against them. This might be as simple as setting goals for a project, and pulling the plug if it doesn’t perform within the agreed parameters. I’d expect such a system to include the usual accountability for centers and faculty: publications and grants.
Rather than play follow-the-leader and mimic the models of other Universities, challenge the Center and Workshop to explore bold, new approaches. Not many Universities consider mergers and acquisitions, but it’s not unprecedented. How about alternative residential experiences? Or developing more customizable degrees that cross the traditional boundaries of colleges, schools, and departments?
Nothing I’ve written about here is ground-breaking. But few schools are attempting this. And even fewer are investing appropriately. While a new building may cost $50 million, it has a very specific and limited value to the University. Compare that to the potential cost of being ill-prepared as higher education evolves and shifts. For a school with an operating budget in the hundreds of millions, or even in the billions, the opportunity is worth the investment.
It’s a hot topic. It’s been a hot topic for over a decade now. The dramatic societal and cultural shifts that have come with nearly ubiquitous technology and connectivity have permeated every facet of our lives. We’ve seen how this shift has had dramatic effects numerous industries including music, newspapers, banking, and retail.
The factors that have affected industries don’t simply alter the industries; these factors change the consumers, who then drive the change to industry. With the music industry, increased bandwidth forced the music industry to offer alternatives to buying an entire album for the sake of a single song. Ideally, this would have happened naturally; instead, recording companies had to adapt or watch music piracy continue to grow. The industries shift, and some players are winners and many, many others are losers.
Higher education is at a crossroads; the availability of information and a consumer-centered culture has produced a generation of students who demand more control over their own education.
Is sitting in a classroom for 4 years, listening to lectures, taking tests, reading textbooks, and getting drunk at frat parties the most efficient use of our education dollars? I think not. Dan Croak, A Completely Different Model for Higher Education
What’s the advantage of a traditional undergraduate experience? Is it the campus life? Access to faculty experts or equipment? The strength of a diploma – either the degree or the name on it?
These advantages aren’t so impressive once you throw a hefty price tag on them. The cost of education has outpaced inflation more than 2.5 times and it’s not slowing down. So cost has become a major factor for many students, opening the door to cheaper alternatives and forcing many traditional institutions to compete on financial aid.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. Albert Einstein
How valuable is the education we provide? In industries such as computer science, vocational programs or certifications can be far more valuable in the job market. Occupations are being created faster than colleges can provide majors or even courses. Yet a non-specialized liberal arts degree (e.g., philosophy, literature) can be a very difficult credential when job-seeking.
It’s not that education is all about landing a job – far from it. But many students enter college with the expectation of finding a job. Earlier this year, a recent graduate sued her school because she couldn’t find employment after three months.
With all of the intangibles, how is the quality of an education measured?
About eighty-five institutions in the Western world established by 1500 still exist in recognizable forms, with similar functions and with unbroken histories, including the Catholic church, the Parliaments of the Isle of Man, of Iceland, and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and seventy universities. …These seventy universities…are still in the same locations with some of the same buildings, with professors and students doing much the same things, and with governance carried on in much the same ways. Clark Kerr, Postscript 1982, Change, 14(7), 23-31., 1982
What reason is there to change? Top institutions certainly don’t need to compete for applicants. But they must compete for the top students, top faculty, and research dollars. And while these institutions of inertia have survived for hundreds of years, innovative “customer-centric” options arise from the smallest competitors. It may not be immediately obvious, but threats to the status quo are already well-established. They come from empowered consumers who make demands—demands which are being satisfied by non-traditional models.
James J. Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, heads up the Millennium Project, investigating the future of higher education and developing new models of pedagogy, research, and educational business. He writes:
“…in a single generation following the Civil War, higher education in America changed quite radically: From the colonial colleges to the Humboltdian research university; with the Land Grant Acts creating the great public universities with strong service missions; from enrollments of hundreds to thousands of students; the empowerment of the faculty. Indeed, everything that could change about the university did change during this brief period.”
What form will higher education take in 10, 20, or 50 years? It’s hard to say. Visionaries may paint a picture of decentralization, or of conglomerate collaborations. The residential model may be in jeopardy. A three-year degree may become the norm. Like science fiction, predicting the future is an exercise in imagination; yet many sci-fi authors’ dreams come true.
In 1998, Donald Hanna declared, that “institutions of all types will be more responsive and accessible to their customers, more adaptable in their programs, and more capable of change than they currently are.”
As I wrote in The University of 2030 the solution isn’t to accurately predict the future; the answer is to create a culture of adaptability, innovation, and tolerance for new ideas. So instead of working on what the future might bring, focus on what we can do today. Today, you can work on your culture for the future.
In researching and writing an upcoming post, I came across this prescient quote from the President Emeritus of the University of Michigan, written in 1997:
“Who needs specialists in an age where intelligent software agents may soon be available to roam far and wide through robust networks containing the knowledge of the world, instantly and effortlessly extracting whatever a person wishes to know?” James J. Duderstadt, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks
If people want to do something great but don’t have the tools, support, processes, or resources, that’s an infrastructure problem.
If people don’t want to do anything great, or change at all for that matter, that’s a culture problem.
Infrastructure is easy to create, but costs money and takes time. Culture is difficult to change, but doesn’t cost a dime.
If you have the right culture, the infrastructure will follow. The demand will drive investment, and the money will come.
The smart investment is in building the right culture.
From July 20-22, 2009 I attended (and presented at) eduWEB Conference 2009. Go check out my presentation slides on Budget Usability Testing.
There’s a wide spectrum of experience, beginner to expert. Some sessions are designed more for one or the other, and it’s not always clear until you’re in the session.
There’s a healthy mix of tech, design, marketing specialists and others. It makes for diverse discussions and perspectives, which I loved.
There are 487 different organizational structures: central vs. silo, IT vs. marketing, one-man-shop vs. large teams, and everything in between.
There are different challenges for each organization. Some are purely concerned with increasing applicants, while others are focused on changing the nature of the applicants, engaging alumni, or even retaining students. You have to think hard about how each lesson can be applied to your individual situation.
There’s a backchannel of activity on Twitter during the entire conference, often adding commentary. This was scary as hell while I was presenting, but immensely valuable to the participants.
A central theme of many conversations was to ask forgiveness later. This is a fast-moving industry and you can’t afford for a committee to kill your ideas just because they can’t keep up.
Facebook Connect for single sign-on. I want to look into using this to help our Alumni Association overcome authentication issues. We have our own internal website, and I can never remember my login. So I don’t use it.
Integrating social media with sites, promoting it to people, connecting social media participants across networks. You can’t just be on social networks, you have to drive people to them.
Mobile is going to blow up. There were lots of mentions in the sessions, but not a lot of dedicated time on mobile use. As far as I can tell, there’s not a ton of real investment in this area, but from watching other participants almost everyone had their phones out for mobile web or Twitter texting at some point.
Meeting online friends in real life… instant connections, credibility, and relationships. I also met a ton of people in person and then immediately started following them online – adding a new dimension to the usual networking atmosphere. This is the social part of social media, and it’s fantastic.
One of the frequent debates in web projects is around naming of elements. When our team recommends a label or title we usually do so from an outsider’s perspective. We make a lot of arguments for our position, but sometimes there’s resistance.
So we do some user testing. Usually, it’s clear that one option is far superior to another, and that settles the argument. But for some reason, this isn’t always enough.
So we have to explain why we got that outcome. Let’s don our psychologist hat for a moment.
Cognitive Load is refers to the demands placed on working memory. Your working memory is typically limited to approximately seven elements (hence the seven digit phone number and so on).
I believe that cognitive load is strongly tied to user experience and information architecture. If users have a working memory limit of approximately seven items, how can you justify twelve global navigation options?
How does this explain naming choices? The cognitive load increases when there are more interactions between elements. Imagine a visitor to a department website looking for course descriptions. She quickly skims through each navigation item hoping to find one that matches what she’s looking for.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t immediately recognize that Program might contain course descriptions. She rules it out, or at best decides it’s on the short list. However, after looking through all the options she’s still not sure where it is. So she eliminates the other choices before deciding it’s probably under Program.
A clearly named item encourages visitors to immediately select that item rather than consult all other options. It’s been observed that users take the lazy route and do not like to read every word. If at all possible, reduce the number of navigation items and name them clearly. This is fundamental to information architecture work.
If cognitive load is connected to user experience (though there are opinions to the contrary), I believe it is most easily seen in the user’s frustration level. One study of working memory and choice observed that, as working memory is taxed, people begin to rely on emotional decision-making rather than rational thought. In short, someone who is trying to recall seven random digits is more likely to make emotional, often irrational choices. Does your website unintentionally push people to emotional decisions about where they even navigate?
On Sunday May 17, 2009, the University of Notre Dame held its University Commencement Exercises. Unlike previous commencement events, it was surrounded by “controversy and buzz”:. A highlight of the ceremony was the commencement address by President Barack Obama. His policies and positions on abortion and stem cell research conflict with Catholic teaching, leading many to protest the invitation and his appearance. Further, he was awarded an honorary degree which was considered a violation of Catholic canon law.
Suffice to say, it was a stressful few months leading up to that Sunday afternoon.
I spent most of Sunday watching the events unfold through a variety of tools:
I had two searches running in TweetDeck – one for notre dame -cathedral -france -paris and one for nd.edu. These gave me a sense of the conversations, frustrations, commentary, and so on. They also allowed me to answer questions for people who couldn’t find a video stream and so on.
At one point, Notre Dame became a trending topic and opened the floodgates – thousands of tweets spilled through and I started skimming as best I could.
One of the protests streamed live video of their demonstration using uStream. I was able to see how that progressed, though I gave up once it turned into interviews.
We streamed live video of the event on our own commencement website. While it was also available on many other outlets, ours was one of the few uninterrupted video streams – many complained of “talking heads” from CNN and Fox News continuing over the speeches.
Through these outlets, I ended up discovering hundreds of links to commentary, live blogs, and other Twitter accounts covering the events. While I wasn’t engaging them directly, it was quite educational.
Our web traffic was off the charts. The ND.edu homepage saw a 400% increase, and the commencement website itself more than tripled the usual daily visits to ND.edu. I don’t have all the stats yet, but we had more than 75,000 visits to the video page alone – in one day. Not too shabby for a site we built two weeks ago, and our first foray into live Flash streaming.
Most of these are readily available outlets for any event. When any breaking news hits, this is where I look first – coverage, citizen journalism, conversation, whatever you call it – all before mainstream media can break the news. There’s no one authoritative source, but that means it’s unfiltered data that can tell the whole story.
Those who tuned in got to see some inspired speeches by some brilliant people. The valedictory address will stay with me for some time. The resolve of the University, and especially Fr. Jenkins make me truly proud to be an alumnus, fan, and employee of the University.
For anyone interested in seeing videos of the event or the individual speeches, they are available at: http://commencement.nd.edu/commencement-weekend/commencement-videos/