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”
National Consortium for Continuous Improvement
in Higher Education (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 reimagining 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
The Unwinding: 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)
*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.
The Unwinding: This Time is Different
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
The Unwinding: 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!
*Meeting the needs of non-traditional students (specific skills, one-off
certificates, sets of courses, self-serve/shopping mentality at UG level)
The Unwinding: 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, 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?
The Unwinding: 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? 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 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
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 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 Projects
Agency
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 hours
52 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/
• 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>
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