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Reimaginingthe 21st centuryuniversityOpen EdTech 2009A Universitat Oberta de Catalunya initiative

Reimaginingthe 21st centuryuniversityOpen EdTech 2009A Universitat Oberta de Catalunya initiative

Report written by

Marie Glenn

© 2010, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Permission is granted under a Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license to replicateand distribute this report freely for noncommercial purposesprovided that it is distributed only in its entirety.

To view a copy of this license,visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.es.

Open EdTech SummitExploring Learning Solutions Together Barcelona,

October 19th and 20th

2009

Webwww.openedtech.org

Videohttp://www.openedtech.org/files/oet2009.html

3 5 Foreword Imma Tubella, President and Llorenç Valverde, Vice President for Technology, UOC

9 Executive Summary13 Part 1: Can the future inform the present? 13 New learning models for the 21st century 16 Interview: Opening minds and educational opportunities in the Middle East Niveen Khashab-Khatib, Assistant Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia

19 Re-evaluating mission, performance and outcomes 22 Interview: The father of the Internet weighs in on the fusion of technology and education Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

25 Part 2: Back to the present. Taking a fresh approach to educational architecture 26 Navigating the educational lifecycle 29 Interview: De-institutionalizing education. Placing learning literally in student hands Nathan Kerr, Award-winning educational innovator from New Zealand

33 Part 3: The 21st century university. Coming full-circle to the past 37 Interview: Connecting the world’s underserved with the world’s brightest minds Amit Maitra, Founder of SATLINK Communications and advisor to the Global University System

41 Conclusion 45 Who took part in Open EdTech 2009? 45 Advisory Committee 45 Participants 47 Organisers

Contents

5The mathematician Seymour Papert, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and the use of technology for learning, imagined the consequences of time travel into the present day of a group of surgeons and a group of schoolteachers from an earlier century in his book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. Papert imagined the bewilder-ment of the surgeons finding themselves out of place in modern operating theatres in contrast to the response of the time-travelling teachers, who most likely “…would fully see the point of most of what was being attempted and could quite easily take over the class”. Ultimately, what Papert stressed with this passage was that, although education belongs to one of those areas severely shaken by technological advances, educational institutions seem to remain oblivious to their surroundings, being wired in a way specifically designed to tenaciously resist change. We wonder if a fictional character of today were able to travel to a 22nd-century university, far from being distressed, would they find a familiar, recognizable scenario and have little difficulty in following the system proposed by next century’s educational programs? We really hope this would not be the case. Indeed, there are already indications that show some changes are taking place in the traditional education system. The concern now is how real change can be promoted.

Foreword Imma Tubella, President, and Llorenç Valverde, Vice President for Technology,Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

6Over the last decade, the field of e-learning has unabashedly adopted the tools and devices offered by digital technologies, making substantial inroads into the field of education in general. Currently, the field of e-learning is mature enough to act as both a critical and open-minded breeding ground from which to generate a fresh debate – one free from preconceptions on the future of education and educational institutions. In this context, the first annual seminar on education and technology, Open EdTech 2008, organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and celebrated in Barcelona, analyzed what it means to be educated in the 21st Century.

Building on this discussion, the UOC, as part of its ongoing desire to rethink higher education, together with the New Media Consortium (NMC), organized the second annual Open EdTech seminar on 19 and 20 October 2009 under the title Create the University of the Future. A group of 40 inno-vators in the field of education, new technologies and e-learning gathered in Barcelona to establish the new bases for the university of the future – a university based on digital technologies and open content, overcoming physical boundaries, being accessible to all and providing personalized and student-centered learning experiences.

7While the groundbreaking brainstorming, so generously encouraged by the participants, was in course, we realized that it was necessary to address the fundamental issues of this discussion in the form of a publication. Reimagining the 21st-Century University captures the essence of that debate;a dialog that revolved around how to design educational institutions that can be truly responsive to the needs of contemporary society. We hope that by providing a forum in which participants have the freedom to inquire “what if” we can spark other conversations that may someday lead to “how to”.

Creating the university of the future is not an easy task and the road is long and tortuous, but we are responsible for encouraging a culture of change when it comes to delivering learning experiences. We have to move away from the suspicion that modern institutions still act like archaic refuges, almost designed to give shelter to travelers of the past, rather than embracing today’s students. We must encourage thoughtful experimentation at all levels, including the creation of entirely new kinds of institutions. Reimagining the 21st-Century University is the embodiment of this belief.

We hope you enjoy it.

9

Executive Summary

What if one were to start from scratch and rethink not only the nature and requirements of 21st Century education, but the very foundation upon which it is built? What would that rede-signed university look like? That was the task put before attendees at the 2nd annual Open EdTech Symposium (OET09) in Barcelona, Spain in October 2009.

This one and a half day gathering unites a diverse group of professionals from across the educational spectrum. There are those whose lab is the classroom, those who spend their time designing and sourcing instructional content, and those whose focus is the supply-chain side of learning – the system, process and techno- logical underpinnings that make it all hang together.

Sprinkled among returning participants were several new faces. These included: Carlos Miranda Levy, the country director of Educar.org, an educational portal in the Dominican Republic; Paula Nirschel, founder of the Institute to Educate Afghan Women; Gregorio Robles, an Associate Professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; and Esra’a Al Shafei, Martin Hall, and Jessica Colaço, three social entrepreneurs and TED

Fellows from Bahrain, Jamaica and Kenya, respectively. They not only added depth to the global discussion, but helped test and refine our understanding of educational quality, access and delivery in underserved parts of the world.

Whereas last year’s program focused on the student’s perspective and the question of what it means to be educated in the 21st Century, this year’s symposium approached the subject from an institutional point of view: How must universities evolve to become more responsive to the needs of society and today’s learners.

This paper builds on that discussion. Using the commentary from the Symposium as a spring-board, this report focuses on the institutional implications of educational reform.

10The major themes include:

New requirements will drive new educational models.

• In today’s hyper-connected society, universi-ties are no longer bounded by place and time. Just as businesses forge global operating models to extend their reach and efficiency, so can uni-versities. Campuses with global scale and local reach could become an emergent model.

• As students gain more say in directing their education, they may also seek more specific learning-to-career paths. Employers are also keen to acquire ever-more specialized skill sets to ‘right-fit’ their talent base from the start. Over time, this may lead to a rise in corporate-univer-sity partnerships and an increasing number of specialized educational institutions.

• As the rate of technological change accelerates it may also quicken the pace of discovery. What massively parallel computing did for the human genome project, autonomic computing and arti-ficial intelligence might do for education. As students leverage powerful technologies for research and other purposes, holograms and other computerized teaching aids could help extend instruction.

Flexible, personalized learning environments require core, standardized content

• The more universities succeed in standardizing core content and resources, the more effective they will be in differentiating individual learning outcomes. That’s because given finite financial, institutional and human resources, buttoning down the basics frees up time, talent and funding to focus on customization.

• For this to happen, institutions need to develop rich, effective means for tagging and metadata collection so that open content can be more readily identified, evaluated, and discovered. The educational architecture that underpins universities must change accordingly.

Even education has a learning curve

• Universities and third-level organizations must determine what activities are truly foundational to their mission, what resources can be shared across disciplines, and what initiatives require specialized service and support.

• Institutions vary in their growth and develop-ment. The priorities of a major market university in the developed world, for instance, will differ from those of a newly formed institution in the

11developing world. Charting where a university is in its own maturity lifecycle is an essential first step in knowing how to shape strategy and allo-cate limited financial and other resources.

Institutions must be open to new and non-traditional sources of learning

• As institutions seek to make the highest and best use of limited budgets, they need to find and apply innovations that disseminate learning content cheaper, faster and better. In doing so, administrators and educators must challenge conventional wisdom and recognize that the increasing complexity of today’s issues and challenges will require a more creative approach to problem-solving.

• Often those with the fewest resources have to be the most resourceful in finding solutions. The developing world, for instance, is home to great innovation given the many economic, financial and political constraints that exist. Within the domain of education itself, there are specialized teaching tools designed to accommodate stu-dents with physical, neurological and related learning challenges. Many of these techniques have the potential for much wider application and serve as untapped sources of innovation.

Universities must foster good citizenship

• The intellectual freedom that comes with student-directed learning brings with it greater personal accountability. As universities strive to nurture student-centric learning environments, the responsibilities that come with that must also be highlighted.

• Among the questions they need to consider are the ways in which they will require learners and mentors to demonstrate accountability and the larger role of the institution in contributing to the public good.

13

Part 1

Can the future inform the present?

New learning models for the 21st century

In reimagining the 21st Century university, we must concede that there is no one model. History teaches us that each advance yields more, not less in the way of choice, regardless of discipline. From the telegraph to whole new forms of mobile communication, progress opens many pathways. So it is with learning.

Today’s third level learning environment offers ample evidence of this. Students with the means have a rich palette from which to choose: large institutions or small; public universities or private; traditional pedagogies or progressive; physical or online campuses, and a range of degree and certification options.

For all of this, however, higher education may be at the cusp of more seminal change. Despite their range and diversity, many third level univer- sities are unprepared for the slow, but inexorable rise of student-centric learning.

Drawing the line of progress out, as students gain the ability to direct their own learning experience, what might the natural extension of educational advancement be? Taking a blue-sky approach, we begin this paper by imagining three different models, or archetypes, for higher education.

Glocal-University: What if a student could gain the ‘scale’ benefits of a global learning model, with centralized hubs in each of the major continents for shared resources, tools and practices? The benefits might include cost and operating efficiencies, the ability to standardize core curricula, as well as ease in establishing and rolling-out leading practices. Local ‘spokes,’ scattered worldwide, would allow students to differentiate their learn-ing, work with mentors familiar with cultural, social and other customs, and direct their out-comes in a local, authentic setting.

In some ways, this model may have already cut its first teeth. The last several years have seen several prominent universities establish a network of international campuses, in an effort to expand their brand presence as well as to ensure access to talented faculty and students.

14Taken to its furthest extent, a global university could function as a “Uni-topia” of sorts, or as one OET09 participant suggested, a United Nations of Education where core pedagogical tools could be packaged and rolled-out to serve the learning needs of those unable to participate in mainstream education.

Yet, the greatest promise of this type of structure may be in the fundamental efficiency of its operating model, a more pragmatic but sorely needed goal. A Glocal-U could serve as a clear-ing house, federating, vetting and disseminating information and learning resources from a number of different sources. Better integration and stand- ardization of core coursework across borders could pave the way for improved partnership and collaboration. The hub and spoke ‘network’ approach would provide a scaffold for those in remote locations to access equivalent quality coursework. Most importantly, such a structure could help confer an internationally accepted set of accreditations.

Speciversity: What if a cadre of universities operated as spe-cialized training centers dedicated to specific disciplines? Some of these might be vocational or the product of a corporate-public partnership where students learn a discrete set of skills and aptitudes required for that occupation. In many cases, that skills training might lead to employ-ment in the given company or field. Because of the one-to-one correlation between their knowl-edge application and their job prospects, students feel directly invested in their own learn-ing outcomes. The qualifications earned trans-late to the CV where in-demand skill sets will have wide cross-border appeal.

Many people have a general set of skills. They could work for Procter and Gamble, or Honda or Nike. But there are others who prefer industry specific knowledge bases. Some students desire a more direct correlation between what they learn in a classroom and its field application. Likewise, employers also seek to reduce on-the- job training and hire candidates whose expertise offers a more direct match. And although voca-tional schools have existed for years, these have tended to cater to a narrower set of career paths.

15Today, corporate-university partnerships are already on the rise, as much to supplement research budgets as to validate and test research initiatives. A speciversity may serve as a natural extension to this activity.

Multiversity: What if the field of autonomic computing advancedto such a stage where it could supplement a student’s regular curriculum? Artificial intelligence and advanced computing may one day enable parallel institutions of research and experimen-tation. Just as the human genome was cracked by hundreds of researchers stoking hundreds more computer networks, the multiversity setting would allow for highly-complex problem solving and modeling to occur in tandem with student and institutional research. There is the opportu-nity for symbiosis between ‘man and machine’ as students and principal investigators leverage supercomputing communities to rapidly advance a particular area of study. At the same time those very technologies serve to mentor students’ own learning, contextualizing the data that is flowing in, helping to predict a range of outcomes, and extending pathways for continued learning.This has the potential to sharply accelerate break-

throughs in science, astrophysics, economics, medicine, technology and other research-inten-sive fields.

This may seem a far off notion, but today’s technologies have already shown their ability to unlock significant discoveries. By way of example, Vint Cerf says, “I am reminded of the Dead Sea Scrolls by scholars who jealously guarded their access to specific portions. Only after the Hunt-ington Library published high quality images of the assembled collection did translation and interpretation advance at a much more rapid pace.”

Artificial intelligence remains a challenging frontier, yet whether it is the hologram teachers that Nathan Kerr hopes to create or supercomputers that can self-manage research experiments, advanced technologies may one day prove to be instruments for teaching every bit as much as they have shown themselves to be great tools for learning.

Although these models posit three very different constructs for the future, there is one university breaking bold new ground today.

16

A new 21st century learning modelInterview

Niveen Khashab-Khatib,Assistant Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia

Breaking ground Opening minds and educational opportunities in the Middle East

KAUST is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the Kingdom’s history. Conceived by Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and armed with one of the largest university endowments in the world – approximately U.S. $10 billion – KAUST opened its state-of-the-art facility in September 2009, seeking not only to shift the country’s traditional dependence on petroleum to fuel its economy but also help transform the nation into a world leader in scientific research.

All of this would be noteworthy in itself. But the audacity of the University’s ground-shifting stance on education is what really sets KAUST apart. Saudi Arabia, like many of its conservative peers in the Middle East, operates as a closed society. Women are not permitted to drive and must usually be escorted when they leave their homes. Career and educational opportunities are also limited. Under Sharia Law, male and female students are generally prohibited from taking classes together with separate entrances and partitions to keep them apart.

Planted smack dab in the middle of this setting is KAUST – a graduate level research institution that puts students and faculty of both genders together within arms reach. “I wasn’t sure what

17to expect when I first arrived with my family this past August,” says Niveen, whose research focuses on leveraging nanotechnology to create tiny biodegradable drug delivery vehicles for use in treating breast cancer and other diseases.

“I thought I’d be in these weird situations, where male and female students would be uncomfort- able working together because of cultural norms, but the most shocking thing to me is that I haven’t noticed any difference,” she adds. She has three to four Saudi women in her classes, each of whom studied in Jeddah or Riyadh. “You look around the room and you’ll find a Saudi woman in an abaya chatting with an American woman dressed in a sweater and short skirt, both think-ing nothing of it.”

Male and female students also partner on group projects and in lab experiments, both areas where Niveen expected she would be intervening fre-quently to assuage concerns and help smooth things along. “The amazing thing,” she said, “is that people just seem to get on with it. They’ve cultivated an atmosphere that is both collegial and professional. It’s been thrilling to see how common passions can make other distinctions, such as gender, race or religion, so irrelevant.”

The appeal of using her education to help others is part of what brought Niveen herself to KAUST. Back in the U.S., she fielded a number of offers to open her own lab, but became inspired by the opportunity to leverage science for social good. “I am an Arab woman by birth, but as someone who has had the benefit of an outstanding edu-cation, I know first-hand how empowering it can be,” she adds.

At KAUST, the provost and faculty are all aware that they have one role in the classroom, one role in the lab and another role in the wider community. “Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syriaall need help in the sciences. An oil-rich nation like Saudi has an opportunity to make a significant contribution, one that might not only elevate its own standing within the region and the world but also foment similar change among is Middle Eastern neighbors.”

This prospect makes some in the region nervous. Although KAUST has only been up and running for a few months, it’s existence has already sparked controversy among the country’s religious elite who feel that allowing students of different genders and backgrounds to commingle will undermine Islam.

18Niveen has little time for these charges. To her, they underscore why science is such a powerful tool. “Part of the discipline of being a scientist,” she says, “is the ability to think rationally and use logic to pierce through issues that can otherwise get bogged down in feelings, emotions and belief systems. The Middle East has endured so much strife and hardship. It is my sincere hope that in a small way, we can show the region what amazing things can come from a group of diverse people bonded by a common passion.”

19Re-evaluating mission, performance and outcomes

There are any number of ways to assess the performance of an institution. Common measures include a track record of retaining high quality faculty and staff, the quality of student admissions, the size of the university’s endowment, and its ability to attract research grants and funding. But if 21st Century learning institutions must evolve to meet the critical challenges of our times, performance standards must also shift.

To differing degrees, all must square how well their learning outcomes satisfy three macro criteria:

Humanitarian lens:

• Many universities, especially those with a public service mandate, consider the ability to offer greater access to learning opportunities as key to satisfying their charter. Their goal is “education for all,” placing advanced education within reach of people who might otherwise not be able to access it.

• Evaluation metrics need to assess their ability to serve those populations. For instance, what certification or degree programs exist for those unable to attend a residential program? Is the institution taking a leadership role in finding qualified students, courting disadvantaged populations who may be slow to put themselves forward due to eligibility, language or economic concerns?

Cultural/social lens:

• While we think of universities as hotbeds of innovations, they play as large a role in protecting the old as they do in forging the new. Educators throughout history have sought to preserve ele-ments deemed vital to cultural identity. They are keepers of the vault of language and tradition.

20• As institutions assess their own assets, ideas and contributions, they need to consider what elements are critical to the university’s mission and which should be preserved, curated or shared with succeeding generations. They might also reflect on what they see as their larger responsi- bility to help protect the legacy of vulnerable communities in other parts of the world, those without access to education who risk having their ethnic identities, languages and traditions expunged.

Economic lens:

• Notions of efficiency, return on investment, and productivity can seem more the purview of a business than a university, but education is, in many ways, an economic good and should also be evaluated as such.

• Are educators delivering curriculum in a way that maximizes knowledge acquisition? Is there a cheaper and better way to distribute that information, engage with students, report on outcomes and validate with assessments? Do universities know the total cost of educating a student? Can they make comparisons across disciplines? How are advances shared and communicated from one department to another?

These are some of the criteria that administra-tors can weigh in determining how “lean” and effective their learning model is.

Learning outcomes are also far from static. Most of us are familiar with the typical require-ments expected of students. These chiefly involve obtaining the necessary credits for a given degree or certification program. Yet, as we march toward a more student-centered learning environment, those standards might grow to include other performance standards. Consider the following:

Meritopia:

• Under this sort of model, the more you apply and prove your learning competency, the more access you are provided within the system, be it the physical or online environment or both. Your ability to advance and specialize depends on your applied aptitude. As one participant in the OET 09 session commented: “It may be that everyone has access to the same educa-tional content at the beginning, but what you end up with depends on your personal performance as you make your way through the system.”

21• Such an approach might democratize learning, not just in terms of access but also in terms of outcomes. For instance, becoming a surgeon usually requires high performance across a range of aptitudes, along with superior concentration and fine motor skills. Not everyone has those abilities or wants that path. A meritopia might offer a “natural selection” process of sorts, helping to route individuals toward best-fit career and vocational choices, based on aptitude, motivation and temperament.

Contribution:

• Today’s collaborative, information-sharing environment allows educators and students to view, comment and revise work on-line in real-time. One of the many benefits of Internet-enabled learning is the ability to create personal learning networks. Yet, that network is only as good as the engaged discussion feeding it.

• Those who gain from such collaboration have a responsibility to give back. In a twist on “publish- or-perish” students could receive peer and mentor group ratings based on the quality and volume of input provided.

While the expectations of students and staff will differ, the goal should be congruency in the standards used to evaluate institutional and stu-dent performance.

22

A new 21st century perspective on learningInterview

Vint Cerf,Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

The father of the Internet weighs in on the fusion of technology and education

Vint Cerf is widely regarded as the “Father of the Internet,” having co-designed TCP/IP protocols with Robert Kahn. During his tenure with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 1976-1982, Vint played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies. In his current role at Google, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications on the Internet and other platforms for the company. Last year, he was tapped by U.S. President Barack Obama to assist in developing the first ever technology literacy framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

He hopes that the NAEP effort will prompt those involved in education to re-examine traditional roles and methods. “The global Internet invites us to make use of a broader range of information than has been found in traditional libraries or through other traditional media,” he says. “It teaches us that information is dynamic, changing and growing with time. It shows us that there are many perspectives and that no single source is likely to be definitive. It also emphasizes the value of sharing of information broadly so that

23more informed assessments can be made of our knowledge of history, science and the real and artificial world around us.”

When asked if he sees Google taking a more direct role in providing instruction, he demurs. “While it is tempting to imagine the possibility of a Google Institute that grants degrees, it may be that Google can have far more effect by helping all institutions to make better use of information technology to facilitate the work of their faculty and students.” That said, Google applications, already play a large and growing role in many classrooms around the world as evidenced by the ubiquity of its search tools. “Our role, thus far, has been largely to facilitate the discovery, creation and use of information by others.”

His distinguished career gives him a unique per-spective on the fusion of technology and edu-cation. “For many years,” he observes, “degree programs in the field of education have focused more on ‘teaching credentials’ and less on the creation of environments that nourish learning. If information technology contributes anything, it contributes tools that allow for exploration, dis-covery, collaboration and self-guided learning.

Skilled teachers guide students and nurture their self-motivated studies, recognizing that we often learn best by doing things rather than reading or hearing about them.”

When it comes to how institutions should evolve in response to 21st Century learning requirements he says, “among the most important lessons that students can learn in this environment is critical thinking and analysis of the content they encounter. Learning to determine quality infor-mation from misinformation, biased information and outright lies has to be of value in assessing every source of information, not only what is found on the net. I would like to think that the 21st Century educational system would make this a priority lesson to be learned and re-learned and refined.”

25

Part 2

Back to the presentTaking a fresh approach to educational architecture

While the notion of a Multiversity or Speciversity may seem a little ways off, envisioning such possible archetypes can help put present-day institutional design considerations into sharper context. This next section offers a perspective on how today’s universities might best anticipate and manage the transition toward becoming open, learner-centric organizations.

The need for core, standardized building blocksLearning institutions cover a wide spectrum. Despite their diversity, the building blocks remain the same. Although institutional models are stretched and shaped by the needs of the demographic they are designed to serve, all require similar ingredients.

The challenge today is that many of these foun-dational elements, curricula, content, resources, methods of evaluation and accreditation are not readily packaged and shared. Basic pedagogy on human biology, for instance, from cellular development to reproduction, should be available in a multi-channel, multi-modal context to fit multi-disciplinary needs. While we have that content today, what we don’t have is the delivery mechanism, tagged, ordered and ready to ship

to whomever needs it. Core content and curric-ulum resources need to be ‘kernelized’ so that educators and students can insert, leverage and apply them to their specific needs and disciplines.

For this to happen, institutions need to develop rich, effective means for tagging and metadata collection so that open content can be more readily identified, evaluated, and discovered. This has implications for institutional design.

An irony in the age of the individualThe more you standardize core content and core resources, the better able you are to differentiate and personalize learning outcomes. That’s because given finite financial, institutional and human resources, buttoning down the basics frees up time, talent and funding to focus on customization. Among management gurus and business process improvement types, the con-cept is known as the “Agility Paradox.” The more you improve the ability to streamline and share common activities, the more you can tailor dis-crete and personalized ones.

26Yet, in order to personalize information, users must not only be able to access content but also understand its context. Susan Metros, Deputy CIO of the University of California and a participant at OET09 put it well when she said that, “We (educators and institutions) must establish strat- egies for linking content to pedagogical wrappers.In other words, learners can absorb instructional content best when they understand its place, time and purpose and when that content comes embedded with effective learning practices.

Agility also requires that institutions improve internal efficiency Many business organizations are familiar with the challenges that silo-based information and decision-making can create. Many too have lived through compatibility issues as new systems jockey with the old. Even with best intent, the task of integrating, automating and streamlining processes that may wind through many different hands and departments can appear daunting.

What’s true for big business may also be true within the internecine structure of most learning institutions. As universities seek to maximize limited budget and direct resources toward the service offerings that best define their mission, they must address fundamental inefficiencies in their internal design. The more an organization bundles the normal jumble of operational func-tions into common, reusable processes, the more time and attention it can devote to activities that are truly innovative.

Navigating the educational lifecycle

Just as the needs and priorities of a start-up enterprise vary significantly from those of a well-established business, education has its own maturity model. Where a university stands on that lifecycle is very much colored by the strength of its existing educational infrastructure. The priorities of a major market university in the developed world, for instance, will vary consider- ably from a young institution that may just be getting its footing in the rural corner of the developing world.

27In balancing their educational portfolio, institutions will assign different weights to different qualities, based on the needs of their student population. This colors the degree to which an institution prioritizes such things as reach versus custom-ization.

In Kenya, for instance, where the majority of the population is poor, rural and educationally under- served, a primary objective might be to create the “last mile” connection and bring learning opportunities to every village. Access may be paramount, seconded by the delivery of core curricula to ensure basic literacy. Other features, such as personalized learning outcomes and inter-disciplinary degree programs can come later.

The reverse may be true in a major metropolitan area of, say, France where educational offerings abound and the provision of core literacy is safely assumed by an established K-12 infrastructure. Access here is of lesser concern. The onus, instead, might shift toward specialization. How does the institution differentiate itself to fit the changing tastes and rising expectations of its student body?

Knowing where one sits in the educational lifecycle can help an institution fine-tune its strategy and balance where and how it invests. In places like Kenya, for example, where access is a pri-ority, investment dollars may be best directed toward applications that can deliver educational content by radio, mobile phone, correspondence or other high/low tech options. In France, the same funds might go toward training faculty on how to develop individual learning plans for each of their students.

Learning development is not static. As the needs of the student population and the quality of the underlying infrastructure change and grow, so must the institutional mission. What is true in Kenya today may be very different 10 years from now. In considering the implications of this, it’s important to recognize that when it comes to adoption, some initiatives may be ahead of the market. For instance, wide-scale adoption of eReaders such as the Kindle and Nook succeed- ed only because consumers were finally prepped and ready. This stands in contrast to the recep-tion the earliest devices received in the 1990s. Since then consumers have reached a stage where they are now comfortable with online media and mobility. The iPhone, Google, rowth

28in online journalism, etc, paved the way for today’s eReaders to hit their stride.

The bottom line is that innovation excellence is a prerequisite regardless of whether an institution is young, maturing or well-established. While the object of innovation may vary as organizations move between mass production/delivery of education to mass customization/long tail specialization, all require the highest quality supports. These include technological resources, open source/opencast access to best-in-class curricula, content, and experienced mentors. As educators and institutions take stock some of the questions they may wish to consider include:

• What will it take for online learning and newer forms of technology and open-source enabled education to reach critical mass?

• What are the underlying preconditions that must be met?

The answers to these questions may help guide strategic decision-making.

Educational currency, the coin of the realmJust as each nation has an established monetary currency that is recognized around the world, so it could be with academic accreditation. That’s because, in many ways information and knowledge is fungible. This raises questions about the wider economics of education and whether there could ever be an equivalent gold standard. We know there is a market for key talent and skills, but is it possible to make that market more transparent?

There may never be an eBay for those seeking jobs or recruiting talent, but current models for finding and recruiting needed skill sets remains rather closed. As globalization and liberalizing world markets open opportunities for the exchange of ideas and educational training, it may prompt greater acceptance of trans-national accreditation standards.

Given the complexity of the issue, however, advances will likely come in a series of steps. Some disciplines will lead the way, perhaps those whose skillets are in greatest demand globally. These will serve as precedent for others to follow over time.

29

A new 21st century learning model Interview

Nathan KerrAward-winning educational innovator from New Zealand

De-institutionalizing education. Placing learning literally in student hands

“For young people, a mobile phone is the com-munications equivalent of a Swiss Army knife,” says Nathan Kerr. He should know. Each week-day finds the New Zealand based Social Science teacher standing before 30 high school students. This led him to wonder what it would take to turn a favorite gadget into a tool for education. After all, “It’s easier to get just about anything else off a kid than their cell phone,” he says. “So why not bring the curriculum to them?” Nathan ran the idea past his students and together they developed “m-learning,” a means of cap-turing, viewing and sharing educational content on the mobile.

Here’s how it works. When Nathan’s Geography students go out on a field study, they use their cell phone camera to record digital images of erosion, wave action, sand dune formation or other evidence aligned with the topics they will be expected to know at their end of year national exams. Back at school, students upload the pic-tures onto a server and stitch them into movies, complete with individual narration, music and other effects. To keep the content relevant, Nathan sets the ground rules. Films can be no longer than two minutes and must address a specific set of research questions. Once com-

30pleted, the students transfer the files back to their cell phone, using a memory card or Bluetooth connection.

The Onehunga School, where Nathan initiated the project, caters to many lower-income and immigrant families for whom English is the second or third language. It is also close to an interna-tional refugee center, home to survivors of the violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Exam scores for students attending the school are typically lower than the national average.

That is why his jaw dropped when he saw the test results from his first crop of m-learners. The scores of his Geography students had shot up 70% over the prior year. “It was simply staggering,” he observes. Nathan attributes the gains to the way m-learning integrates students into the learning process. By filming themselves, students literally placed themselves at the center of the assignment. They could see the work, hear the narration, and personalize the treatment. “It became a multi-sensory experience,” he said. “The combination of sight, smell, sound, and the physical creation process reinforced their

recollection and their knowledge.” When it came to the exam, many students reported that certain questions automatically triggered a series of memories. “They would see themselves running around a beach or standing atop a sand dune and the answers would come streaming back.”

Because M-learning techniques are relatively cheap and scalable, other educators at the sec-ondary and university level are clamoring to exploit the technology. The Canadian province of Manitoba, for instance, is working with Nathan to help bring education closer to their traditionally underserved native population. Because students live in remote locations, getting to school each day is difficult. With m-learning, native students now visit a central facility once every week to upload new course materials and download their completed assignments. In the meantime, they share files containing their ongoing work and related data to their friends and teachers. “This is one of the most exciting elements of m-learning,” says Nathan. “Not only does it reduce the cost and infrastructural requirements of scaling education, but it makes it much easier for students to collaborate with others.”

31Meanwhile, Nathan has been busy racking up a string of awards. In the past year, he won the World’s Innovation and Collaboration Teaching award in Hong Kong, the Asia-Pacific Special Collaborative Teaching Project, and New Zea-land’s Most Innovative Teacher of the Year award.

He’s also thinking about the future. “As we look to the 21st Century learning environment, we have to reach the student where they are and that means placing learning technologies literally in their pocket,” he says. What’s the next frontier for m-learning? “Simple,” he responds. “Built-in projectors and holograms. A student waiting for a bus or home recovering from an illness could view a hologram of their teacher presenting a given unit or lesson,” he adds. “It just makes the learning come more alive.”

33This paper began by peeking into the future to envision where learner-directed education might lead. It then examined how today’s institutions might bend and stretch their present academic architecture to prepare the way. We close with a nod to the past, to those barebones values that first defined university culture and which may yet stand to guide us best of all.

The paradox of progressThe earliest universities were monastic enclaves where a range of scholarly pursuits was nurtured. The character of the scholars themselves was formed at the same time, upon the bedrock of faith, humility, and service.

In a secular way, those plain, age-worn values may take on new relevance as today’s learner- society picks its way through contemporary challenges, in particular our staggering array of content, consumables and choices. Faith - Learners help institutions embrace uncertaintyA minister, OET09 participant, Gavin Dykes’s father, was once asked, “what is the opposite of faith?” He responded, “Certainty.” Gavin mused that in some ways the same might be said of education. After all, to learn is to question.

It is human nature that those who rise to positions of leadership, in universities and other settings, are more inclined to feel they know the answer, that what has worked before will work again, and that though their stature, relative income, experience, or other factors removes them from the day-to-day realities faced by their students, faculty and administrators, they nonetheless have a good handle on that population’s needs and aspirations. Sometimes, of course, they do. But at a time when openness, be it in innovation, research, and application is a competitive necessity, that sense of certainty can act as a blinker. It can also dampen one’s appetite for risk.

Gavin Dykes hangs a sign on his classroom door that reads “head-learner.” “Our students understand that we don’t have all the answers,” says Dykes. “What they need is for us to be fully engaged in their questions. It helps if they see that we’re actively engaged in problem-solving of our own, be it in our classroom or own research. That provides credibility.” That same spirit imbues Nathan Kerr’s teaching sensibility. He goes to great lengths to credit his students for inspiring the m-learning technique. “My stu-dents know far more about mobile phone tech-nology than I do,” he said. “I simply laid out a process for transferring the data. They reviewed

Part 3

The 21st century universityComing full-circle to the past

34it and then we tested the new process to see if I’d gotten it right. It was like being graded,” he adds, laughing.

When the learned view themselves as learnersor co-learners, along with their students, the effects can be powerful. The edge of discomfort that uncertainty brings makes people and the institutions that comprise them more alert to new ideas, more tolerant of different perspectives, and more eager to act and respond to move the organization forward.

Humility - The least among us (so to speak) often have the most to teachSometimes it can seem if there is an implicit, if unintended arrogance when it comes to perceiving what communities have the most to teach and the most to learn in education. For instance, specialized services and curricula have been used for decades in supporting the learning needs of differently abled populations. While these services may be designed with great ingenuity, it may not occur to those engaged in mainstream edu-cation to consider leveraging these techniques within their own classroom.

An award-winning language teacher in a suburban U.S. middle-school was a severe dyslexic. Every year, she issued a communiqué to parents apologizing in advance for the spelling errors she knew she was bound to make in her emails. Yet, inside the classroom she was a transformative teacher. Her disability had, through the years, given her a range of methods and approaches for conveying the rudiments of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and structure and the art of applying them in different writing styles. She used music, materials, visual aids and other experiential teaching aids to help her students access the curriculum. Perhaps because of these multiple touch-points, students seemed to retain more of what they’ve learned and perform better on tests.

Gallaudet University in the United States is ded- icated to supporting the needs of hearing impaired students. Vint Cerf who is himself hard of hearing, sat on the University’s board for a number of years. He feels that although Gallaudet was created to serve a specific audience, many of the tools have the potential for much wider application. “I think adaptive learning techniques have a role to play in an expanded-function university,” he says. He points to technologies such as CART (Communications Adaptive Real-time Translation)

35and automatic video captioning, as applications that could be used to accommodate a range of different learning styles. Cerf adds, “I think we have much to learn from virtually everyone on the planet. Anything we can do to help to capture that information and make it accessible has to be beneficial.”

Global or regional biases can also blinker us from considering other potentially useful learning innovations. For instance, compared to some of the closed societies of the Middle East or coun-tries in the developing world, the rest of the world might see ourselves as exporters of ideas. There can be a sense that our wide array of learning options naturally means that best prac-tices and innovations start here. Lost in this is the understanding that innovators in countries like Bahrain or Kenya, must be especially resourceful. They often have no choice but to be enormously creative in order to manage infrastructure or other limitations.

Consider Esra’a Al Shafei, the 23 year old founder of MideastYouth.com, a student-owned independ- ent network that uses social media to promote tolerance and human rights. “In a region where speech is censored and controlled, where stereo-

types and conspiracy theories abound, and where minority voices are suppressed,” she states on the group’s website, “it is imperative to nurture a dialog that can bring us closer to peace and stability.” Her organization offers a platform for conversations that couldn’t otherwise be held, amplifying the dialog with the reach of social media. “We have shown that Israelis and Arabs can communicate respectfully with one another, that Muslims can fight for the rights of secularists and Bahai’s, that Jews can work for the rights of Palestinians and Muslims, and that we can all agree to respectfully disagree,” she adds.

Esra’a is also using MideastYouth.com to connect with American schools, allowing U.S. students to join the conversation and expand their own social and cultural awareness while also creating a further outlet to bring ME stories to a wider audience.

Other parts of the world could learn from Esra’a’s success. Similar techniques could be applied to improve relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim populations in France or England, for instance, or to help bridge ideological divisions between the political right and left in the U.S. and other countries.

36ServiceThe increasing openness of today’s learning environments has a tendency to foster greater accountability. One of the quietly powerful elements of social media, wikis, and message boards is their ability to create an audience for the “everyman,” the ordinary student. It’s one thing to submit a poorly-written paper to an audience of one, the professor, and quite another to subject it to the gaze and scrutiny of the masses. The public domain creates an organic community. Those who teach in these environ-ments report that students invest greater attention and care into projects that they know others will see.

Likewise, the intellectual freedom that comes with student-directed learning brings with it greater personal responsibility. There is an expression in our hyper-connected society that the “network provides.” As students explore their passions, they must not only master the foundational elements of their desired discipline but also contribute to intellectual life of their respective communities.

In some ways, service is the ultimate proof of scholarship. That’s because, as with most dis-ciplines, the difference between theory and application is a whole lot of trial and error. When we think of the complex problems that await today’s university graduates, it is hard to under-estimate the importance of cultivating critical reasoning ability.

Therein lies the larger rationale for the service model. As universities strive to foster a student-centric learning environment, they must also highlight the responsibilities that come with that. Among the questions they need to consider are the ways in which they will require learners and mentors to demonstrate accountability and the larger role of the institution in contributing to the public good.

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A new 21st century learning modelInterview

Amit MaitraFounder of SATLINK Communications and advisor to the Global University System

Network effectsConnecting the world’s underserved with the world’s brightest minds

It seems only fitting that a former adviser to the NASA Space Station team should be engaged in leveraging a range of terrestrial and satellite based communications systems to advance learning opportunities for underserved populations. That is Dr Amit Maitra’s goal and the mission of the Global University System (GUS), a non-profit organization comprised of universities, research institutions and policy making bodies from around the world. Founded in 1988, it is one of the earliest partnerships dedicated to using advanced tech-nologies to address the educational, health, and environmental needs of the world’s poor.

In some senses, it also remains the most ambi-tious. That is because GUS seeks to create a global network of leading researchers, scientists, mathematicians and public policy advocates. Based on their individual specialties, the group operates in some ways like a global “brain trust,” one that local and national authorities from remote and educationally underserved geographies in Africa, Central Asia and around the world can tap into for project planning, economic analysis, scenario modeling and related expertise. In a similar fashion, the group supports the needs of many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations agencies.

38The ability to connect so many diverse people is where Amit’s NASA experience comes in handy. As part of the U.S. International Space Station FREEDOM Program (SSFP), a precursor to the current International Space Station, Amit developed and implemented an electronic knowledge network to leverage the skill-sets of a diverse range of scientists, policy consultants and international partners. Out of this initiative, he and NASA program managers and astronauts bandied the idea of leveraging satellite technology to serve as a distribution channel for research and educational material in parts of the world where fixed-line, wire-line and related ICT infra-structure remained decades behind the rest of the world.

In a similar fashion, GUS seeks to address digital divide issues. To date, members have pooled their respective competencies to craft detailed scenario models that can help public planners assess the needs, requirements and impact of various development initiatives. “In Bangladesh, for instance, the government sought help with a housing development intended to relieve the plight of the country’s homeless and improve educational access,” Amit explains. “Whereas past developments quickly resulted in massive

over-crowding as word of improved living con-ditions spread, the GUS team leveraged their modeling techniques to help Bangladeshi planners craft a more comprehensive infrastructure program to benefit multiple communities.”

More ambitious still is the group’s Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace-gaming (GCEPG) initiative, a series of interlinked country- based simulation models. “The program applies sophisticated mathematical techniques to churn through masses of economic data and analyze a range of complex issues, from funding, to international security, to environment impacts,” Amit says. The resulting “mega-models” help identify optimal development paths. “Over time,” he adds, “GUS will use these tools to help developing countries manage their natural resources, improve educational access and promote political and economic stability.”

Hilary Clinton, the current U.S. Secretary of State, made popular the line, “It takes a village to raise a child.” In a similar way, Amit Maitra and his colleagues at GUS are exploring how powerful a global network of scientists, professors, students and researchers can be in educating the world’s underserved.

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41When tasked with reimagining the 21st Century university, we struggled to conceive a place without any educational infrastructure. With this blank slate and whatever vision and resources we could command, we had to determine what sort of model we should build. Like the proverbial chicken and egg question, we found ourselves musing what would come first, content or chan-nels? Moreover, we wondered, what thinking, processes and outcomes need to shift in order to place the student fully at the center of his or her learning experience?

Naturally, we assumed ours would be a fictional creation, since where in the world could you truly start from scratch? All but the most remote places around the globe had at least some rudi-mentary elements, or so it seemed. That was before Haiti.

That country’s devastating earthquake shows us just how fragile an infrastructure can be. A nation that had been struggling to bridge the divide between the “haves” and “have nots” was counting on building a strong middle class through educational and economic advancement.

The blank slate we had to strain to envision at the outset of our project was now laid out before us starkly, a sad pile of rubble where once there were schools.

So we begin anew, all of us, in our efforts to expand learning opportunities but with the ideo- logical questions somehow sharpened by the urgency of the everyday realities faced by those in Haiti and in other places around the world whose needs may too often go unnoticed were it not for the screech of some unutterable catas-trophe.

Carlos Miranda Levy, our colleague during the Open EdTech meeting and an active e-learner activist based in the Dominican Republic is already active drumming up ideas, resources and curricula to sustain members of Haiti’s refugee population. The UOC and others within the expanded Open EdTech consortium are also engaged, liaising with educational organizations and assistance agencies to offer support.

We know from our studies and our own expe-rience that universities are far from static, but shaped and informed by those within them.

Conclusion

42Already, we have seen examples of several dif-ferent 21st Century educational forms from breakthrough institutions in the Middle East seeking to use the power of education to open minds, end discrimination and advance scientific innovation; to anywhere/anytime education courtesy of mobile telephony; to a virtual ivory tower that can bring the power of a global brain trust to the most remote parts of the world through the reach of advanced communications technologies.

And these are just the beginning. We enter the second decade of the 21st Century with the technology, tools and ideas to place education within reach of students and place the student at the center of the learning process. This is in itself a considerable achievement. Yet the demand is even greater. Be it Haiti or Harlem, the need accelerate availability and access is palpable. It’s time now to get to work.

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Who took part in Open EdTech 2009?

Advisory CommitteeBegoña Gros, Vice President for Innovation, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, New Media Consortium (NMC).

Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean & Director, Office of Educational Innovation and Technology, MIT.

Rafael Macau, Director, Information Systems and Multimedia Studies, UOC.

Julià Minguillón, Associate Director, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, IN3, UOC.

Albert Sangrà, Director, Education & ICT Program, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Executive Committee member, EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network).

Llorenç Valverde, Vice President for Technology, UOC.

ParticipantsEsra’a Al Shafei, Blogger, peace activist. Founder of MideastYouth.com.

Marc Alier, Professor and Developer of open source solutions for education and mobile devices, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Magí Almirall, Director, Office of Learning Technologies, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Giovanni Bonaiuti, Researcher, Laboratorio di Tecnologia Educativa, Dipartamento di Scienze dell’Educazione, Università degli Studi di Firenze.

Mark Bullen, Associate Dean, Curriculum & Instructor Development,BCIT Learning & Teaching Centre, British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Gardner Campbell, Director, Academy for Teaching and Learning, Associate Professor of Literature and Media, Honors College, Baylor University.

Tom Caswell, OpenCourseWare Specialist and Web 2.0 Entrepreneur.

Jessica Colaço, Research Mobile Leader, Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (SRCC).

Susan D’Antoni, UNESCO Open Educational Resources Project, ICT in Education.

Claudio Dondi, President, European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL), President, Scienter, research and innovation for training and Vicepresident, MENON Research and Innovation Network, EEIG.

46Gavin Dykes, Education and technology consultant and Associate Director of Futurelab, UK.

Antonio Fini, Ph.D. Student, Knowledge Engineering, Laboratorio di Tecnologia Educativa, Dipartamento di Scienze dell’Educazione, Università degli Studi di Firenze.

Lev Gonick, Vice President for Information Technology Services, Chief Information Officer, Case Western Reserve University.

Joel Greenberg, Director of Strategic Development, Learning and Teaching Solutions, Open University, UK.

Begoña Gros, Vice President for Innovation, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Montse Guitert, Director, Digital Literacy Area, Department of Computers Science Multimedia and Telecomunication, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Marvin G. Hall, Information technology specialist and creator of “Halls of Learning”.

Mara Hancock, Interim Director for UC Berkeley’s Educational Technology Services.

Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, New Media Consortium.

Paul A. Kirschner, Professor of Psychology and Lifelong Learning at the Department of Psychology and Programme Director of Research on Lifelong Learning for Professional and Personal Development in the Netherlands Laboratory for Lifelong Learning, Open Universiteït Nederland.

Debby Knotts, Director, New Media & Extended Learning at The University of New Mexico.

Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean & Director, Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT), MIT.

Brian Lamb, Emerging Technologies Discoordinator, Office of Learning Technology, The University of British Columbia (UBC).

Eva de Lera, Senior Strategist, Office of Learning Technologies, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Alan Levine, Vice President, NMC Community & CTO.

Phil Long, Director of the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (CEIT), University of Queensland.

Susan E. Metros, Associate Vice Provost and Deputy CIO, Professor of Design, The Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California.

Julià Minguillón, Associate Director, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Carlos Miranda-Levi, Consultant and Project Developer in Technology Strategies. Coordinator of CIVILA, Educar and Virtual Libraries.

Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology, Newcastle University.

Paula Nirschel, founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women.

47Ismael Peña, Lecturer, Public Policies for Development, School of Law and Political Science, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Gregorio Robles, GSyC / LibreSoft Research Lab, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

Albert Sangrà, Director, Education & ICT Program, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Executive Committee member, EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network).

Rachel Smith, Director, Development and Programs, New Media Consortium (NMC).

Jutta Treviranus, Director, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto.

Llorenç Valverde, Vice President for Technology, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Lluís Vicent, Blended Learning Coordinator and Faculty member, Universitat Ramón Llull (URL).

Paul G. West, Director, Knowledge Management & Information Technology, Commonwealth of Learning.

Steve Wheeler, Lecturer in Information & Computer Technology, School of Continuing Professional Development, University of Plymouth.

Marie Glenn, Writer and founder, Effective Communications, and author of this report.

Organisers

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)http://www.uoc.edu

Office of Learning Technologies (OLT)http://learningtechnologies.uoc.edu(olt.uoc@gmail.com)

Open EdTech 2009 was co-sponsored by:New Media Consortium (NMC)www.nmc.org

Open EdTech 2009: www.openedtech.org

The Open EdTech 2009 event photographsappearing in this report were kindly provided byLarry Johnson, Tom Caswell and Alan Levine.

Office of LearningTechnologies

Reimaginingthe 21st centuryuniversityOpen EdTech 2009A Universitat Oberta de Catalunya initiative