I have always been intrigued by the promise of online education. It is easy to see how geographic and economic boundaries can be overcome through technology. Educational institutions can compete for students well beyond their traditional local boundaries, growing nationally and internationally while bringing down their per-seat costs. Schools no longer need expensive classrooms and dormitories to grow.
Small, innovative institutions can grow globally and as rapidly as they dare to dream. High-quality teaching faculty can be recruited from anywhere on the planet -- to teach thousands of students simultaneously. Students can study anytime and attend classes from anywhere. In addition, growth of free, high-quality education sites such as Khan Academy
and open-source courses such as Opencourseware at MIT, along with global satellite and broadband communications networks, have removed economic, social, and geographic barriers to high-quality education.
However, several additional transformations are underway as well. Instead of printing expensive academic books that quickly become obsolete, newer forms of interactive online books and educational and testing materials are being created. These books are not only easier to keep current, but they can also be brought to market rapidly at a much lower cost.
We can conduct literature reviews and browse the collections at several libraries (as well as at Google Scholar) on any topic while sitting at our computers -- and we have a far richer experience than we would ever have at a traditional library.
Libraries themselves are undergoing dramatic transformations. Instead of being quiet places with no food or drink allowed, they are becoming major hubs for collaboration, with cybercafés, conference facilities, multi-media rooms equipped with high-quality technology, and specialized digital collections.
Additionally, traditional student lab spaces are giving way to lower cost and flexible virtual labs, accessible anytime from anywhere, with hundreds of custom software configurations possible.
However, what has been most impressive to me, recently, has been not just the technology or the access, but a fundamental change in students’ learning experience. Technology has brought people together in a more powerful way than ever before, similar to what social media did to global communications.
My fellow students in my doctoral classes at Capitol College
are scattered all over the map geographically. We have never met. Yet we have built an affinity and a relationship, and we can talk and discuss issues and ideas far more powerfully than I have experienced in a traditional classroom.
During class, we have audio and chat. Video is not enabled yet, though we have had video meetings and discussion sessions on Google+. The entire class session is recorded. We can use it for review or to attend asynchronously if we missed the class for some reason.
Class work is done in a collaborative manner. Since everyone in my class is a seasoned information technology professional, we have a lot to learn from each other. Our work papers and dissertation project ideas are posted for everyone else to comment on and critique in a helpful and constructive way, and we are graded on the quality of our suggestions to our peers.
We can review and comment on the work of others, at our own pace, anytime during a given week. Instead of receiving feedback from one professor, we receive high-quality feedback from 18 additional experts. We provide helpful references and knowledge based on our own expertise in the field. Our work product is refined in a dramatic way that simply would not have been possible in a traditional classroom.
this is so surprising that today we are living in a world where knowledge is just a click away and there is no doubt in it that online education sites are rendering a free world class education for anyone anywhere but it feels so annoying when it comes to a country like pakistan where only 29,128,970 out of 187,342,721 are using internet which constitutes only 15.5% of the total population as computed by internet world stats 2011.
Mansur, I was offering a course through NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies a number of years ago. In preparation for the course, there was mandatory use of software for uploading curriculum and for communicating with students throughout the semester, as well as other purposes. There was no opt-in/opt-out possibility offered. To your point, there was support to assist faculty, if needed.
Agree Joanne. Sometimes the challenge is gaining faculty adoption -- thus institutional strategy on transitioning, training, coaxing, inspiring, funding and working with faculty to adopt technology is very important.
Mansur, It's so much more cost effective with the scale that can be offered via Web-based learning. The cost savings on real estate for institutions would be large, and that reduction in expenses in the US translates to tax dollars being saved. There would be less overhead in general, plus less teachers needed in a Web-based model. Certainly there are down sides to distance learning, but it will become a necessity given the costs many schools are struggling with today.
Ashish. The market frequently forces institutions to change. Sometimes you need top leadership change. Sounds like you worked with a great leader - just came back from a conference where many speakers discussed the need for such leadership to increase the pace of innovation. My next blog shares my take aways from this conference.
Joanne and Ashish. Yes you are right. More and more educational institutions are offering education and training geared to the full-time professional as well and businesses are happy to partner with educational institutions to offer much better cutting edge education and training at a far lower cost that they could provide themselves.
This change is something which hardly anybody at the University appreciates until its too late!
How do you force them to be pro-active rather than reactive to change?
I remember working on SAPs BPX project and it was just so awesome to work on something in real time which constantly gave feedback(from equally interested Pros) again in real time.
We had a Manager who was more like a Conductor of an orchestra who only interfered if things got too out of hand/aggressive.
The trend of online, on-demand learning and global classmates enables people to live anywhere and attend school anytime. I believe this trend will extend beyond school to impact home office work environments as "home schooling" teaches discipline in focusing without teachers that traditionally enforce quiet and attention in classrooms of the young.
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In all my years interacting with CFOs, I have not met one who actually understood IT -- not that I expected them to.
Why, then, do I continue to see ads seeking a strategic CIO who will report to the VP of Administration and Finance or the CFO? Sometimes ads are slightly better: CIOs report to the Chief Operating Officer. Those conducting the recruitment will sagely say: “The CIO will have complete empowerment and access to all cabinet members and the president.” However, these organizations appear to lack an understanding of the role of the CIO and the CFO.
After observing and writing about CEOs who do not leverage their CIOs to propel their organizations forward, it was very refreshing to learn about the great CEO/CIO partnership at Kaiser Permanente at this year’s World Health Congress held in Maryland.
Despite an initial round of federal funding to develop state health information exchanges (HIEs) as part of Obamacare, these clearinghouses were challenged to develop a financially sustainable model. Because it addressed sustainability early, the Delaware Health Information Network is viewed by many as a template for HIE success.
It began as a relaxing visit with my college buddy and his family. It became a glimpse into the technology-enabled future of worldwide collaboration in engineering.
True story: Despite the HITECH Act of 2009, the CEO of a major urban hospital continued his institution's policy of not hiring a CIO or CISO. Like many others, he took a wait-and-see attitude, even though HITECH strengthened the enforcement of healthcare security and privacy laws, and provided financial incentives for healthcare organizations to adopt electronic health records and information security.
Wells Fargo uses social software to replace email chains and help its sales team collaborate more effectively to land deals, according to Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, VP Collaboration Strategy for Wells Fargo. Mitch Wagner spoke with Carlson-Jagersma at the E2Innovate conference
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Showing results is the best way to win over social business doubters, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution's Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
Companies need to take advantage of new technologies to simplify interfaces, improve capabilities, and enhance back-office processes. But they can't upgrade their Websites too often.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
Software-defined networks, which deliver virtualization functions to enterprise networks, have the potential to dramatically change network design and significantly reduce costs and maintenance.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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