managing the "unwinding" of higher education

Managing the “Unwinding” of Higher Education: The Fort Hays State University Red Balloon Project

Larry Gould

Fort Hays State University

“Driving Innovation to Set the Pace of Change”

Network for Change and Continuous Improvement (NCCI)

Annual Conference

July 11-13, 2013

Key Takeaways

This presentation is about the creation and management of a transformative teaching/learning change initiative---the FHSU Red Balloon Project.

The Project is primarily about the “re-imagination of learning” at the institutional level, but finds its origins in the “unwinding” of higher education at a national level.

The primary focus is on blended learning, collaborative learning and collaborative knowledge-creation as defined by faculty and student interests and served by new and evolving integrated campus support structures.

Key Takeaways

Although the project involves innovative thinking from the institutional to the individual student level, the attention is primarily on exploration and experimentation with emerging technologies, open educational resources and re-engineered learning approaches at all echelons.

The full success of the project requires new scholarly communities (for collaborative knowledge-creation) and a single definition of learning across any and all learning spaces (no distinction between on- and

off-campus delivery systems).

Key Takeaways

Because we cannot continue to approach learning the same way we have in the past (see charter statement), the purpose of the FHSU Red Balloon Project is to bring together people, resources, interests, vision and opportunities into a new institutional learning collaborative. Fueled by the “unwinding” of the coil of structures, norms and old processes that held together traditional higher education, FHSU finds that it needs to enlist its best minds to re-imagine teaching and learning; use its learning analytic capabilities to better understand how the generations of students we serve actually learn; and generate plausible scenarios about the quality and integrity of what we want future learning experiences to look like—on- or off-campus.

Key Takeaways

The scholarship of teaching and learning is central to the success of the project (“improvement in postsecondary education will require converting teaching from a “solo sport” to a community-based research activity. – Herbert Simon, Carnegie-Mellon scholar, 1978

The Red Balloon Project represents the way in which FHSU is re-imagining its learning playbook to create “a system that incentivizes learning, outcomes, access, low costs and innovation.” (Andrew S. Rosen, Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy, Kaplan Publishing, 2011).

The “Unwinding” of the New America*

No one can say when the unwinding began—when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way. Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways—and at some moment the country, always the same country, crossed a line of history and became irretrievably different.

If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of that unwinding. You watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape. When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind….the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone.

*Prologue to The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, 2013 by George Packer.

The “Unwinding” of New America’s Higher Education

Similar to the unwinding of New America’s political, social and economic fabric, an analogous ‘unwinding’ has been underway in the US higher education system.

The unwinding is not necessarily news, but the “elements of the unwinding” continue to become more diverse, complex, greater in number and choice in the marketplace is slowly shifting from the provider to the consumer.

Out of list of 37 elements that I have gathered, let me share what I would consider some of the most powerful and prevalent implications.

The Unwinding: This Time is Different

Reason # 1: The Advent of the Internet

Both organizational and individual sources continue to erode higher education’s role as the gateway and keeper of knowledge

* The demand for self-paced, flexible and personalized learning (DIY U)has grown (sometimes led by sherpas[new faculty role] and driven by lifelong learning?)

* Declining societal and employer appreciation of higher education


Reason #2 – Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and/or configuration of the system that delivers the services (Google and the Columbia River)

*Technologies are responsible for “unbundling” classes and degrees from traditional institutions just the way music and video distribution, film, TV , newspapers, books and travel/hotels have been unbundled by the web.


Reason #3 – Social Media Networking Technologies

The BIG Question: Can Students Do It “Themselves?”

Three Growing Trends -- Personal Learning Networks (Self-Directed)/Open Source (Free Stuff)/Blended Learning

Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Transformation of

Higher Education – DIY U

By Anya Kamenetz


Reason #4 – Generation Blend*

Generation Blend:

Managing Across the Technology Age Gap

By

Rob Salkowitz

*Boomers, Xers and Millenials all in one class? Whew!

*Meeting the needs of non-traditional students (specific skills, one-off certificates, sets of courses, self-serve/shopping mentality at UG level)


Reason #5 – Structural Transformation of the Economy Requires New Jobs, New Skill Sets and Meeting the Challenges of the Eroding Middle Class (looking for a 21st century liberal and applied education that is video, mobile/BYOD and in the cloud)

There are new and inflated national EXPECTATIONS of what a transformed, higher education landscape can deliver in terms of more and better educated students (The Obama Promise, Lumina Goal, Academically Adrift).

*Are we redefining learning outcomes and skill-sets to meet those expectations? Is the future all about competency-based learning? Shaped to fit local communities or workforces?


Reason #6 – Web-Driven Collaborative Learning and Collaborative Knowledge-Creation (Wikinomics, 2008)

* When Will We Stop Using Technology to Replicate the Classroom Learning Model? Students Expectations are Different and Continue to Evolve.

* When Will We Begin Using Learning Outcomes---Instead of the Credit Hour---as the Most Credible Measure of Faculty Performance and the Ultimate Measure of a College Education?

The Value Proposition and Its Production Functions: The “Wikinomics” Learning Paradigm*

Collaborative learning**

Dominant pedagogy: Socially-constructed/Discovery-driven Process Self-paced personal learning environments (think 21st century digital media tactics combined with self-reliance and empowerment)Faculty as tech-savvy facilitators of an emergent learning processCarefully designed blended (online and F2F) “communities of interaction” facilitated by technology, cognitive approaches and intentional pedagogies to enhance student engagement and content co-creation

*Tapscott and Williams, Wikinomics, 2008 *Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, 2005**Tapscott and Williams, Educause Review, Jan-Feb, 2010

The Unwinding: This Time is Different Reason # 7 – The Rest (Maybe? Right!) of the Diverse and Complex

Catalysts that Contribute to the Unwinding

Financing Challenges(tuition, fees and beyond)

Affordability (cost of a degree relative to value, federal and state funding)

Unbundling of Faculty Roles

Demands for Accelerated Learning /Prior Learning Credit

The Increasing Value of Blended Learning

Assessment (Learning and Academic Analytics)

Accountability (retention, persistence, attainment, completion rates?)

Accreditation (new forms, domestic and worldwide)

The Unwinding: Looking for Game-Changers

So, if the elements of the Unwinding are as powerful, compelling and comprehensive as depicted by so many pundits and prophets, what options do we have as academic leaders?

We know three things:

1.Change is not optional

2.Continuous and transformational innovation is not optional

3.Strategic thinking is not optional (as one pundit has noted, higher education could become the “rock” around which water flows, that is, people will find a way to get educated without us).

The Unwinding: Looking for Game-Changers

Here’s the question Diana Oblinger, CEO of Educause, poses about the changing higher education landscape being shaped by the Unwinding:

How do we ready our institutions, our students, and ourselves for what higher education can---and must---become?

For FHSU, here’s the response:

the Red Balloon Project has become one of our most important change initiatives and game-changers.

AASCU’s

Red Balloon

Project

Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency

Red Balloon Contest $ 40,000

Winning Team: MIT

Post Doc, plus 4, plus 4,000

Learned about the contest on Tuesday, announced the team strategy on Thursday, contest began on Saturday

Where DARPA Put Their Balloons

How long did it take to find 10

randomly placed 8 foot high bright red

weather balloons, suspended 30-50

feet above the ground, somewhere in

the United States?

8 hours52 minutes

The Red Balloon Contest Is Both:

A Metaphor

And

An Analogy

The Red Balloon Contest is a

Metaphor for the new ways

that knowledge is now being:

• Created

• Aggregated

• Disseminated

The Red Balloon Contest Is an

Analogy for the way that we

might work together

collaboratively to re-imagine

the learning experience

A Game-Changing Value Proposition and Its Production Functions:

The FHSU Red Balloon Project The ultimate purpose is to explore “forward thinking, creative

and market-smart” curricular innovations to include post-course learning experiences supported by emerging technologies, open instructional resources and collaborative learning (e.g. flipped classrooms, certificates and certifications, gaming, cloud computing, data set mining, information assurance, improved course development processes, new learning partnerships, new academic technology strategies, etc.)

Let’s go to http://rbfhsu.org/

http://www.rbfhsu.org/

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• In closing, let me re-emphasize why FHSU thinks it’s so important to “take charge of change”:

On the plains of hesitation, bleach the bones of

countless millions who at the dawn of victory,

sat down to wait….and waiting, died.

George W. Cecil, 1923

Thank you. Questions?

Available at: <www.fhsu.edu/provost>