Perhaps most important, this new wave of innovation relies on a
disaggregation within higher education, a common phenomenon in
mature industries but one that the higher education industry
has remarkably resisted for centuries. Indeed, one could argue
that the core of the educational enterprise has always been
vertically integrated in the body of the faculty. That is,
faculty members have thought up new courses and programs,
developed syllabi, outlined learning objectives, "curated" the
necessary content and learning artifacts (mostly choosing books
and chapters and articles), walked the proposed
courses/programs through necessary approvals (governance),
taught the courses/programs, advised students, stepped in when
students needed help, administered assessments and graded
performance, and periodically revised the course/program. That
was the way of the world until online technology entered the
picture.
Online learning has disaggregated the model. Today, various
players perform various aspects of what was once the exclusive
province of faculty:
- A faculty member might be hired as
the subject matter expert to develop a course but never teach
it or be involved in it again.
- Faculty might be hired to teach a
course that is already developed and handed to them, with
little room for them to change the course (common in
large-scale programs where standardization is
important).
- Third-party providers (e.g.,
Smarthinking) might provide student tutorial help.
- Students might turn to a
peer-to-peer learning network (e.g., OpenStudy) instead of to
faculty when they run into trouble.
- Adaptive learning technologies
might intelligently guide a student's pathway through the
learning content.
- The person assessing a student's
work might not be the faculty member teaching the course
(e.g., Western Governors University) and some MOOCs using
peer assessment).
- Self-guided learning models (e.g.,
the College for America program at Southern New Hampshire
University) might have no faculty instruction at all.
Paul LeBlanc and Educause