Borderless Learning
and Technology
or “Brain Circulation”
Presented at ePortfolio 2005 Programme
Cambridge, England
October 28, 2005
Linda M. Delene, Ph. D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, Mi, 49008-5204
Higher Education Industry
• $300 billion annual industry with 80 million
students worldwide and 3.5 million faculty
and staff to teach and support
• $200 billion USA industry, three million
people, $13 B from international students
• 1.5 million foreign students globally
• 75% of graduate students at London
School of Economics are foreign students
(World Bank Estimate, 2004)
2
Four Higher Education Trends
• Rise of “knowledge” economy – with
knowledge replacing physical resources
as main driver of economic growth. Best
firms now spend 33%+ of investment on
knowledge intensive intangibles…
• Globalization of higher education – as an
export industry and through technology
3
Higher Ed Trends Cont.
• Increased competition – for students, for
research grants, for donor funds, and for
external partnerships
• Massification of higher education– the
proportion of adults with higher education
qualifications.
4
Massification Trend
• Increases among adults with higher
education as noted:
(1) USA increased from 4% to 65% during 1900’s
(2) OECD Countries doubled the percentage from
22% to 41% between 1975 and 2000
(3) China doubled its student population during the
1990’s
5
USA Massification Challenges
• Maintaining academic freedom while
conducting (sponsored) research
• Providing intellectual coherence within
the information revolution
• Fiscal challenges from greater access to
higher education and lower State $$$
• International competition – heated
• Taking more responsibility for K-12
6
General Challenges for
(USA) Public Universities
• Twin demands for excellence and mass
access with declining State $$ support
• Moving from being a “state institution to
state supported to state assisted to
state located and finally to state annoyed”
• In 1987, seven of top 25 were public while
in 2002 only four of the top were public
universities in annual USNWR rankings
7
University of Phoenix
• 280,000 students on 239 campuses with
units established in China and India
• Initiated by John Sperling, economics
professor from Cambridge University
• 95% of its students working adults
• Run as a business organization with
$383 million spent by the Apollo Group
on marketing Phoenix University in 2004
8
Young Multi-tasker Students
• Home networking = $8.4 billion
industry in 2004, growth to $17
billion expected by 2008
• 26% of students involved
with two or more media
simultaneously
• Exposed to eight (TV for six)
hours of media messages
each day
• 15,000 hours watching TV with
11,000 hours in the classroom
by end of the 12th grade
• Spend 49 minutes per day
reading for pleasure
9
Information Coherence
• Connection with past,
present and future
• More information
leads to specialization
and knowledge
fragments…
• How to integrate the
sciences, humanities,
the social sciences
and the arts?
10
21st Century Skill Set
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Information, numeric, and media literacy
Critical thinking and systems thinking
Problem identification
Formulation and solution
Creativity and intellectual curiosity
Interpersonal and collaborative skills
Civic and social responsibility
11
Toward Data-Intensive Scholarship
• Beyond supercomputing and scientists
• Social sciences are using “big” data files to
comprehend events usually studied alone
• Choreographers are using visualization
and simulation techniques to model and
teach dance, conduct master classes
• Literature scholars are using algorithms to
conduct content analyses of old texts
12
Examples Social and
“Learning” Networks
• Blogs – bring links,
networks, references,
recommendations to
campus culture
• Digital Stacks –
information from
vendors like Google
may fail to provide
comprehension
• Podcasting –
developing and
delivering a broadcast
message via the Web
• Folksonomy – tags
used to define key
words which reflect
how individuals
interpret and organize
information
13
Undergraduate Education
• National initiative to
investigate and
promote integrated
learning in
undergraduate
education - Carnegie
Foundation for the
Advancement of
Teaching, NY, 2003
14
University Learning Assessment
• Historically, quality was “faith-based”…
• Little actual direct evidence of learning
• Four categories of current measures:
(1) actuarial data (rankings, grad rates, scores)
(2) expert ratings (faculty and administrators)
(3) Student/alumni surveys (NSSE)
(4) Direct assessment of student performance
15
Examples of Evidence
• Carlton College – faculty panels to assess
writing at end of sophomore year
• Washington State University – two-hour graded
writing exam
• Educational Trust – compares graduation rates
of 1,500 schools against student records and
socioeconomic backgrounds
• Collegiate Learning Assessment – two types of
tests – performance and writing – involving
30,000 students from 234 institutions
16
Real and Virtual Learning
• Virtual University of
Monterrey, Mexico
uses teleconferencing
and the Internet to
reach 70,000 plus
students throughout
Latin America
• Issues of privacy,
confidentiality, and
archiving co-exist
• OpenCourseWare
(OCW) project at MIT
provides disciplinary
resources free using
the Internet
• Technical and human
convergence with
multiple devices now
involved in learning
and teaching…
17
Information Commons
• Network-mediated
learning will disrupt
traditional learning,
moving toward
interdisciplinary and
inter-institutional work
• Three-dimensional
Web with avatars and
portals for access
• New and different
linkages between
learners and teachers
will mature if the
cyber-infrastructure
becomes available
• By 2004, 86% of the
British Library patrons
carried laptops
18
Western Michigan University
• Improve individual student comprehension
• Integrate learning and co-curricular life
• Foster positive changes in courses,
academic programs, and services
• Build an inventory of “best practices”
through research on portfolios
• Document the continuing improvement of
institutional performance
19
EPortfolios and Assessment
20
Limits of Portfolios
• Portfolios do not bring
value independent of
the learner
• Intellectual activities
advance learning –
not the portfolio that
enables the activity
21
Creative Change in the Academy
• “All vocations attract certain personality
types: academe appeals particularly to
introspective, narcissistic, obsessive
characters who occasionally suffer from
mood disorders or other psychological
problems. Often these difficulties go untreated because they are closely tied to
enhanced creativity…”
“Nutty Professor” by Mikita Frottman, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 16, 2005, p. B7.
22
Final Reflection
• “A university is dead if the
faculty cannot
communicate to the
students the struggle –
and the disappointments
as well as the triumphs of
that struggle – to produce
out of the chaos of the
human experience some
grain of order won by the
intellect.” Noel Annan
23