CCTP737 The Post-Internet University and the Future of Elearning Martin Irvine Founding Director and Associate Professor Communication, Culture, and Technology Program Georgetown University

Textbooks/Sources

• Philip G. Altbach, et al., eds. American Higher Education in the 21st Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
• James Duderstadt, A University for the 21st Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
• Matthew Pittinsky, ed. The Wired Tower: Perspectives on the Impact of the Internet on Higher Education (Financial Times-Prentice Hall, 2002)
• Stan Davis and Jim Botkin, The Monster Under the Bed: How Business is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984)
• Many readings from Web sources and EReserves in the library

Proposed Class Projects (to be discussed):

• Group creation of website with bibliography, data links, and research on the political economy and business of the post-Internet university and the possibilities for elearning.
• Investigation of potential for CCT and other GU grad programs for specific and targeted elearning programs and elearning content with a business model for self-sustaining operations.
• Develop and manage an online survey to quantify potential student acceptance/adoption in specific contexts, subject areas; attempt to find acceptance for graduate courses and find highest demand areas.
• Develop idea and plan for a new company or service that would solve industry problems, utilize existing and emerging technology, and meet a demand in a specific demographic for life-long learning needs.

Requirements and Grading

Weekly participation in the seminar with online discussions (using Blackboard threaded discussion forums), weekly rotating group presentations on topics and readings, participation in a group seminar project (to be discussed), and a final research project (creative and innovative formats like website presentations and databases are strongly encouraged).

The themes of the seminar are evolving in real time as we study them. Additions and changes to the syllabus agenda are also encouraged as students bring their own background and interests to the seminar and as new data becomes available.

• Opening Introduction to topics and issues
• Cases and examples for discussion and analysis

• James J. Duderstadt, A University for the 21st Century, Part 1, pp. 1-69.
• Excerpt on Technology In Educause Review, Jan/Feb 2001 [pdf].
• Duderstadt, "Transforming the University to Serve the Digital Age." Educause, Cause/Effect, 1998.
• Stan Davis and Jim Botkin, The Monster Under the Bed: How Business is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) [Begin reading this book for the business view of what's at stake in education in knowledge.]
• Thomas Hughes, Through a Glass, Darkly: Anticipating the Future of Technology-Enabled Education (In Educause Review, pdf).
• John Seely Brown, "Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn" (in Change magazine, AAHE, pdf).
• Department of Education, Condition of Education-2002 (pdf index page) [browse for overview of higher education data]
• See especially sections on "Participation in Education" (Undergraduate and Graduate) (pdf); "Special Analyses" (pdf) (On Non-traditional Undergraduate); "Contexts of Post-Secondary Education" (pdf); "Societal Support for Learning" (pdf) (Compare US data on post-secondary support with other OECD nations)
• "Higher Education and Today's Learning Economy: An Interview with CollegisEduprise's William H. Graves," by James L. Morrison and William H. Graves. Technology Source, May/June 2002. [Overview of issues with someone who's been in the higher ed technology scene for many years.]
• Overviews of Elearning companies in the higher education market space:
  • Elearning Company List from University Business
  • Current state of elearning companies and their responses to marketplace evolution: Sharon Gray, "A Moving Target: eLearning Vendors Take Aim in a Changing Environment," Syllabus Magazine, August (2002).

Topics for Discussion

• Making of the modern university, Europe and US: comparison of national models, institutional bases.
• Universities and modern nation-state building: what is to become of the university in a era of the decline of the nation-state and national control of culture and access to knowledge?
• US private and public system, land grant act
• Post-WWII “multiversities”
• Expansion of disciplines in the later 20th century
• Rise in power of the professional schools (law, business, medicine)
• Disciplinary cultures and internal rivalries: “Two Cultures,” “Third Culture” and interdisciplinary battles
• Diversity of institutions and businesses in contemporary higher education are a long way from the upper-class, isolationist Idea of a University by John Henry Neuman (1854).

Question for analysis:
Does recent ICT extend, change, and/or reconfigure the power centers in higher education disciplines? Where are centers of academic and institutional power most resistant to forces of transformation (law, social sciences, medicine, etc.)?

Readings:

• Continue with overview readings from week one.
• Nannerl O. Keohane (President, Duke U.), "The American Campus: From Colonial Seminary to Global Multiversity".
• Robert O. Berdahl, et al., "Introduction" to Altbach, American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, 1-11.
• Roger Geiger, "The Ten Generations of American Higher Education," Altbach, 38-69.
• Duderstadt, Part 2, Chap. 4, "Education"
• Martin Trow, "Federalism in American Higher Education," in Arthur Levine, ed., Higher Learning in America: 1980-2000 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993): 39-66. [eReserves][How does the federalized structure constrain business models for elearning, which can be anytime, anywhere, across all jurisdictional and national borders?]
• Brian Pusser and Dudley Doane, "Public Purpose & Private Enterprise: The Contemporary Organization of Postsecondary Education," Change Magazine, 2001.
• Steven J. Rosenstone, "The Idea of a University," August, 2001. [Well-stated view of the role of the contemporary public university, using Univ. of Minnesota as example.]
• Some historical cases and archival documents:
  • Higher Education History Documents Archive (Higher-ed.org)
  • University of California, Berkeley: Paradigm for the upper-tier, state research university.
  • History of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson's democratic vision.
  • History of Harvard University, the oldest private U.S. university.
  • History of Georgetown University.

Topics for Discussion

• How higher education works as a business
• Size of industry, economic realities
• Hierarchy and taxonomy of U.S. higher education: the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education
• Analysis of a university's operating budget and balance sheet: revenue/sources of funds, operating expenses
• Political economy and collision of economic forces: scarcity economics and ubiquity/abundance economics
• Post-secondary education statistics (NCSE/Dept. of Ed)
• The guild system and disciplinary reproduction
• Demographics, US and world: levels of ed., costs, wealth effect
• Wriston's Law and intellectual capital
• Elearning business models

Readings:

• Ami Zusman, "Issues Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century," in Altbach, 109-148.
• Duderstadt, Part 2, Chap. 8, "Resources."
• Ronald G. Ehrenberg, "The Supply of American Higher Education Institutions," Forum for the Future of Higher Education," Aspen Colorado, September 24-27, 2000.
• Shelia Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997): Chap. 1, "Academic Capitalism," and Chap. 2, "Academic Science and Technology in the Global Marketplace," pp. 1-22, 23-63. [Book description at Slaughter's website.] [EReserves]
• Gordon C. Winston, Jared C. Carbone, and Ethan G. Lewis, "What’s Been Happening to Higher Education? A Reference Manual 1986-87 to 1994-95" (The Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education) [crash course in higher education economics and finance issues].
• Arthur Levine, "Higher Education: A Revolution Externally, Evolution Internally," in Pittinsky, Wired Tower, Chap. 2.
• Mary Marcy, "Diversity, Demographics and Dollars: Challenges for Higher Education," Project on the Future of Higher Education, 2002 [pdf].

Higher Education Industry: Main Data Sources

• Chronicle of Higher Education Data:
  • 2001-02 Almanac (Data and Stats)
  • Money and Management
  • Higher Education Finances
  • Index of For-Profit Higher Education
• Core Data from Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): How many people over 25 have 4 years of college or more? What is the annual expenditure on higher education in the U.S., and the total education expenditure as % of GDP?
  • Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), "Digest of Education Statistics, Post-Secondary"
• National Education Association (NEA), "Facts and Figures" (Summary Higher Education data)
• College Board, Higher Education Landscape | Trends in College Costs and Pricing
• Chronicle of Higher Education, Index of For-Profit Education Companies and archive of Articles on For-Profit Higher Education [may require CCT login]

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

Sources for study and discussion:

• Matthias Schonlau, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., Marc N. Elliott, Conducting Research Surveys via E-mail and the Web. RAND publication [pdf files].
• Katja Lozar Manfreda, "Design of Web Survey Questionnaires: Three Basic Experiments," JCMC 7 (3) April 2002.
• Web Survey Methodology Site (webSM.org):
  • Web Survey research bibliography
  • Software products and companies reveal how (and whether) software can support goals and methodology

Internet-based Survey Information Sites:

• Pew Project on the Internet and American Life
• NUA Internet Surveys [aggregator of survey data on all aspects of the Internet; see education and demographic data]

Group Project Preparation:

Draft a set of questions about prospective adoption of elearning by our survey population (define) that would be useful to an elearning company or to a university needing to know the marketplace.

Exchange goals and ideas for questions in the discussion forum before class, and bring copies of your questions for distribution in the seminar meeting.

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

Continue discussion and planning of Web survey.

Topics for Discussion:
The Higher/PostSecondary Education Economic Nexus

Questions for analysis:

• What’s the difference between a well-financed, well-endowed, non-profit university and a for-profit corporation? (Recognize, then go beyond, the legal status of non-proft organizations, i.e., non-distribution of profits and no owner-shareholders.)
• Would expanded access to college education and degrees through elearning increase the economic impact? How could we measure this?

Readings:

• Larry L. Leslie and Paul T. Brinkman, The Economic Value of Higher Education (Phoenix, AZ: American Council on Education-Oryx Press, 1993). Part I, 1-35, and Part II, 37-103. Data tables, pp. 200-211. [eReserves]
• NASULGC (National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges) "Shaping the Future – The Economic Impact of Public Universities" (pdf, policy and lobbying document with good data); another copy here.
  • Value Added--The Economic Impact of Public Universities (pdf, earlier NASULGC report, December 1997)
• David Breneman, Sarah Turner, Brian Pusser, "The Contemporary Provision of For-Profit Higher Education: Mapping the Competitive Market," April, 2000. Working Paper of the For-Profit Higher Education Research Project, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. [Another copy here.]
• William Zumeta, "Higher Education in the States: Teetering on the Brink Once Again," National Education Association, Almanac 2002 [pdf]. Link to NEA Almanac Table of Contents.
• Shelia Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University, Chap. 7, "Reprise: Academic Capitalism," 208-45. [eReserves]
• Greg Capelli, "E-Learning in the Postsecondary Education Market: A view from Wall Street," in Pittinsky, The Wired Tower, Chap. 3.

Cases:

"The Economic Impact of the University of California"

"Economic Magnet and Multiplier Effects of the University of Minnesota"

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

Economics of Higher Education (continued)

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

• What's driving the access and control conflicts and controversies
• The nature of academic professionalism, teaching and research, and recent market forces on academic professions, roles, and identities.
• Realities of institutional power and disciplinary guild systems for careers and professions.
• Learner-centered elearning disrupts power centers that invest authority in professoriate and disciplinary guilds.
• The realities of institutional power and institutional self-reproduction.
• The realities of academic hierarchies and social class, university degrees, social power networks in universities.
• Potential of elearning to "level the playing field" or democratize access to higher education and spread knowledge more equally: illusion, threat, possibility?
• Can academic and professional guilds reproduce through elearning and credentials obtained from elearning and degrees?
• The institutionalized autonomy, independence, and hierarchy of schools, colleges, disciplines and departmental faculties.
• Autonomy and internal logic of major discipline power centers: medicine, law, engineering, business, sciences, liberal arts.
• Impact of user-centered knowledge communities and user indirections to information, knowledge, learning: implications of blogging, file sharing.
• Possible scenarios for elearning in the next decade: will it disrupt the system, be co-opted, be postponed, embraced by the next generation as part of strategies for reproduction and extending academic power?

Discussion topics:
Chose an academic, professionalized discipline and analyze how it works. How could elearning disrupt, challenge, reinforce, or extend disciplinary power and control? What are some of the strategies used (discursive, rhetorical, ideological) to block, limit, or control the introduction of elearning as an entry point into the guild?

How do disruptive innovations work in an industry (see Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma), and how could this dynamic affect higher education as an industry group?

Readings

• Duderstadt, Part 2, Chap. 7, "The Academy"
• Bourdieu's model of sociological analysis of academic power and reproduction
• Bibliography of the works of Pierre Bourdieu
• Hervé Varenne's Ethnography of the Classroom Course Syllabus
• Tony Becher and Paul Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Inquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines, second edition, Open University Press, 2001 [extracts, eReserves]

Notes on Working with Bourdieu

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

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• Distance Learning Debates, Pre- and post-Web
• Hypertext, hypermedia, Internet and web and learning environments
• Interpretation and media
• Teaching, Learning, Technology issues
• Pedagogy and disciplinary practice
• Learning in communities of practice: the social context of learning
• From Distance Education to Elearning
• Current and Emerging Technologies for Elearning
• Information access, digital libraries, intellectual property, copyright

"Of the entire value chain of higher education, content is the least valuable part." (See article in Syllabus on MIT's OpenCouseWare)

Readings:

• John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000): Chaps. 1, 5, 8. [eReserves]
  • Some excerpted chapters available online: Chap.1 (Limits to Information), Chap.5 (Learning-In Theory and Practice) [plain formatting, no notes].
• Andrew Feenberg, "My Adventures in Distance Learning." [Early (1999) overview of arguments and logistics confronting a university-based distance learning operation.]
• Carol A. Twigg, "Quality, Cost and Access: The Case for Redesign," in Pittinsky, Wired Tower, Chap. 5. [See Carol Twigg's info page at Renssalaer with links to other articles.]
• Communities of Practice: Overview from Elearning Post
• Philip Agre (Department of Information Studies, UCLA), "Commodity and Community: Institutional Design for the Networked University." (Excellent survey and bibliographic review).
• NASULGC, Higher Education Information Technology Alliance, Issues Agenda, 2002 [Compilation of policy and lobbying issues from major higher ed organizations]
• Paulson, Karen. "Reconfiguring Faculty Roles for Virtual Settings." Journal of Higher Education 73.1 (Feb. 2002). [On changing models for faculty-instructional roles in elearning contexts with summary of literature on the issue.]
• Archive of articles on distance education from the Chronicle of Higher Education [use CCT password]

Resources/Cases

• MIT's Open CourseWare Initiative
• TextWeaver Project (Andrew Feenberg, San Diego) [Professor-centric, text-based discussion software. The focus on defending the centrality of the teacher seems simplistic, and learning today is way beyond text.]
• Project on the Future of Higher Education:
  • The Institure on the Future of Higher Education and Project Documents
• The Center for Academic Transformation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • The Pew Learning and Technology Program: see their Suggested Reading links
• National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) of Educause (the main higher ed technology professional organization)
• The Futures Project (Brown Univ.): for higher education policy
  • New report: "Meeting The Competition: College and University Presidents, Faculty, and State Legislators View the New Competitive Academic Arena"

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

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• The easy part: what’s possible and not with technology
  • Technology barriers and ideal pedagogy models
  • The always postponed future of interactivity
• Internal contradictions of technology limits, expectations
  • What is the current state of the technology teaching us to be, socializing us as information users of a certain kind?
  • Search and data: assumptions about the universe of information
  • Being digital and learning behaviors
• Hypermedia and real-time learning environments
• Software models and systems architecture
• The life-long learning challenge
• Case studies:
  • MIT Open Courseware initiative
  • Successful elearning and blended/hybrid models (Open U, Phoenix, UMD)

Readings:

• Peter Coffee, Eweek article on Web searching assumptions and over-determined
• Michael Beller (Open U., Israel), "The Crossroads between Lifelong Learning and Information Technology A Challenge Facing Leading Universities," Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4 (2) December 1998.
• Matthew Pittinsky, "Five Great Promises of E-Learning," in Pittinsky, Wired Tower, Chap. 8.

• The Hard Stuff: institutional barriers, business models, learner adoption
• The Market: is there a marketplace for elearning provided by universities?
• University guild system and barriers to guild induction with elearning.
• Emergence of education service providers, education management organizations
• Copyright and intellectual property: competing forces of control and democratization of access
• Digital Libraries: the written knowledge base and challenges to creating digital libraries
• Corporate Elearning and Knowledge Management vs. university/academic learning models
• For-Profit Learning Providers and Emergence of the "Learning Management Organization"
  • Could the HMO model be applied to post-secondary education and life-long learning with elearning as the delivery channel?

Readings and Issues:

• To be developed
• Christopher L. Tomlins, American Bar Foundation, "Wave of the Present: The Scholarly Journal on the Edge of the Internet"
• Digital Future Coalition [archive of debate on Millennium Copyright Act ]

Digital Rights Management/Copyright/Digital Commons

• Interview with Lawrence Lessig, Darwin Magazine, August 2002.

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

• eCollege, UPhoenix (Apollo Group), Blackboard, Sylvan, Universitas21 and Thomson Learning
• For-profit education companies and investment speculation: publicly traded companies, capital markets, market opportunities, conflicts in business and education
• Eduventures data
• Current industry problems, barriers
• Elearning and Knowledge Management, Content Management, Customer Relations
  • Convergence of LMS, KMS, and CRM in corporate and organization applications

Software design for elearning (LMS, CMS) (examples and cases):

• Blackboard
• eCollege
• UPhoenix
• XanEdu
• Eduventures data

University Business Guide to Elearning Companies

Business Week Guide to Leading Online Universities

Business 2.0's Webguide for Elearning

Business Investment in Education/Private Education Providers

• David Breneman, et al., "The Contemporary Provision of For-profit Higher Education: Mapping the Competitive Market," University of Virginia, School of Education, 2000.
• Richard S. Ruch, Higher Ed, Inc.: The Rise of the For-Profit University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), Chap. 1, "Confessions of a For-Profit Dean," Chap. 2, "The Players," Chap. 4 "The Financing of For-Profit Higher Education," Chap. 6 "Lessons from the For-Profit Side." [eReserves, except Chap. 1]
  • Chap. 1 [another copy here]
• Venture Capital in Education Companies Still Solid in 2002
• The E-Bang Theory: Education Industry Overview (Sept. 1999), Banc America Securities
• See other industry reports and commentary at the Masie Center site.

Cases:

• Elearning Practiced:
  • Accredited elearning/distance learning programs
• North Shore Community College (MA): Pyramid Project for the Anytime, Anywhere Campus
• Corporate Elearning and elearning service companies
  • TechLearn Trends Archive, Masie Center [good source of cases and applications of elearning]
  • Smartforce [and company whitepaper on elearning vendors]

Cases and examples for discussion and analysis
Higher Education and Elearning Resource Page

• Higher education issues worldwide.
• Is the digital divide new (or real), or is there an ongoing wealth divide?
• Globalization, education, and economics.
• Education as major U.S. export service, international schools and for-profit education companies.
• World Bank, OECD, and other international initiatives, data, investments.
• ICT and worldwide education: will elearning shift the balance of education resources?

Readings:

• Martin Irvine, "The Global Higher Education Industry," in Matthew Pittinsky, ed. The Wired Tower: Perspectives on the Impact of the Internet on Higher Education (Financial Times-Prentice Hall, 2002).
• Eduventures, "A Global Education Market?" White Paper, May 2001.
• World Bank, Education Programs and EdInvest (a program for private investment in education)
  • Harry Patrinos, "Market Forces in Education" (World Bank, 1999) [Word 97 document]. Another copy here. [World Bank analyst makes the economic case for private investment in education in developing world countries.]
  • "Education: Last Frontier for Profit," UNESCO Courier, 2000. Another copy here. [go to p. 16].
• Chris O'Hagan, "Global Universities: Sowing the Seeds of the Future, or Hanging On To The Past?" Technology Source, May/June 2002.
• Chronicle of Higher Education, archive of articles on global education industry

Group discussion of research projects. 

[No class. Thanksgiving break. Continuing work on research projects.]

Presentations of research projects.