Building Empires of Collaboration:
Aligning and Using the Social Web to Enhance
Higher Education’s Value Proposition
SIDLIT 2012
Re-imagining Education: Tools and Challenges
Larry Gould
August 2, 2012
Setting the Scene: 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
“Only the Paranoid Survive”
Andy Grove – Former CEO of INTEL
Setting the Scene: This Time is Different
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)
Setting the Scene: This Time is Different
Reason #3 – Social Media Networking Technologies
The BIG Question: Can Students Do It “Themselves?”
Three Growing Trends - Personal Learning Networks (SelfDirected)/Open Source (Free Stuff)/Blended Learning
Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Transformation of
Higher Education – DIY U
By Anya Kamenetz
Setting the Scene: This Time is Different
Reason #4 – Generation Blend*
Generation Blend:
Managing Across the Technology Age Gap
By
Rob Salkowitz
*Boomers, Xers and Millenials all in one class? Whew!
Setting the Scene: This Time is Different
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, global 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?
Setting the Scene: This Time is Different
Reason #6 – Web-Driven Collaborative Learning and
Collaborative Knowledge-Creation (Wikinomics, 2008)
*When Will We Stop Using Technology to Replicate the Classroom
Learning Model?
*When Will Begin Using Learning Outcomes Instead of the Credit
Hour as the Essential Measure of Faculty Prowess and a College
Education?
Ripe for Disruption? Pressures on the Formal
Curriculum
Informal
Learning
Participatory
Culture
The
Formal
Curriculum
(Courses/Programs)
High-Impact
Practices
Experiential
Co-Curriculum
Adapted from: Randy Bass,
Educause Review, March/April
2012
The Value Proposition and Its Production Functions:
The “Industrial Age” Teaching Paradigm
Faculty-centered, lecture-centered, classroom-centered
Course content designed and selected by a lone-ranger/craftsman belonging to
an academic guild
Individual learning prevails/Collaboration the exception
Technology perceived as a static, neutral tool/just apply it
Faculty workload and engagement obligations are for course and program
responsibilities/not socially-based and distributed learning
One generation/One way to Learn
* See Barr and Tagg, 1995, Nov-Dec. From Teaching to Learning—A New Paradigm for
Undergraduate Education, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 27 (6), 12-25.
Traditional Support Model – Planning & Implementation
Technology
Teaching Center
Instructor(s)
and course
Students
Library
Writing Center
Randy Bass, Educause Review,
March/April 2012
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 process
Carefully 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
Team-Based Design
Writing Center
Instructional design
and assessment
Specialists, Tutors
Classroom instructors
Instructor(s), TAs,
Librarians
E-learning
Course &
Student
Learning
Classroom technology
Instructional
technologists & support
Content management
Instructor; Library
1:1 student support
Instructor; Library and
Student services
Randy Bass, Educause Review,
March/April 2012
This Time is Different: Answering the Big Questions
If dwindling resources, growing expectations and emerging
technologies have come together to create opportunities and threats
(call them big questions) that challenge and perhaps even force us to
develop new and more effective educational paradigms and business
models, where do we start and what’s our strategy?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For members of the American Association of State Colleges and
Universities (AASCU), the answer has been the RED BALLOON PROJECT,
subtitled the “re-imagination of undergraduate education.”
What is the Red Balloon Project?
The Red Balloon Project and Shifting Paradigms
As Mehaffy notes in the video, the original DARPA Red Balloon
contest has become an ANALOGY and a METAPHOR for the way
that AASCU institutions are working collaboratively to re-imagine
undergraduate education, but also how:
Learning works, where it works and how it is evolving; and
The “implications of the wikinomics learning paradigm”
(assisted by technological change) are shaping the nature,
functions, creativity and re-making of 21st century faculty,
universities and colleges (private, public and for-profit)
The Red Balloon Project and Shifting Paradigms
Within the larger confines of what is called the Red Balloon Project,
institutions and faculty are being asked to engage in “forward thinking”
about the following kinds of topics:
New models for institutional organization and design
New models for enrollment management
New models for faculty time, effort and responsibilities
New models for curriculum and course design and re-design
New models for instructional design/learning delivery
New approaches to assurance of learning
New approaches to finance, partnering and operations
The FHSU Red Balloon Project:
Linking Learning with an Academic Technology Strategy-Leadership, Topics and Goals
 Leadership provided by 17 “next generation” faculty fellows (with
CTELT support)
 Use a revitalized course development process to encourage all
faculty to explore open source materials and collaborative learning
(e.g MIT opencourseware, Carnegie Mellon OLI, TED-ED, ebooks,
iTunesU, lecture capture, etc. )
 Adopt and use technology to encourage and document student
learning (e.g. learning and academic analytics, ePortfolios, etc.)
The FHSU Red Balloon Project:
Learning is Priority One
 Re-consider the “definition” of what constitutes a classroom (e.g.
online/campus learning spaces with supportive and engaging
opportunities/ communities of interaction powered by
appropriate social media and other technologies)
 Facilitate the systematic consideration of existing and new
pedagogical approaches that are research-based and powered by
21st century social media and other technologies (e.g. flipped
approaches, MOOCs, problem-based learning, active learning,
constructivism, etc.)
The FHSU Red Balloon Project:
Learning is Priority One
 Consider the applicability of emerging technologies and social
media for creating online “communities of interaction” and faculty
access and use (e.g. smartphones, tablets, pinterest, e-books, etc.)
 Support for Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21st Century
– Collaboratively developed, affordable eCourse and eBook RB
project published through joint partnership between FHSU and
AASCU (Epsilon LMS at $50 per student per shell)
The FHSU Red Balloon Project:
Learning is Priority One
 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. internships, certificates
and certifications, gaming, cloud computing, data set mining,
information assurance, etc.)
 Explore and evaluate the implications of a post-LMS world
The FHSU Red Balloon Project:
Learning is Priority One
 Leverage faculty/student/staff academic technology strategies
and initiatives to collaborate with corporations and acquire
external funding and grants (e.g. CISCO academies and
partnerships, Next Generation grants for enhanced engagement
and support of learning, NSF, etc.)
 Develop immersive technology approaches and experiments (e.g.
CISCO “byod” and open platforms for institutional collaborative
knowledge-creation to enhance learning and operations)
This Time Really is Different
We’ve heard it before, but this time is different. None of us can be
institutions of the future by remaining institutions of the present.
None of us want to become the “Lehman Brothers” of the higher
education industry. Thus, the core driver of the Red Balloon initiative
is courageous faculty and administrative leaders ---leaders who accept
the idea that “incremental innovation” is an acceptable way to change
and compete for the future---a future that doesn’t arrive by dramatic,
sudden leaps, but by trying to make things better on a daily basis.
Toyota developed incremental innovation as an approach, but it’s not
just a business principle; it’s a principle of excellence and a way of
navigating what Roger McHaney calls the “new digital shoreline” in
higher education.
• In closing, let me not speak for you, but let me reemphasize 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>
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