What are Universities for?

Traditionally, universities have been the sites of knowledge production, storage, dissemination and authorization
Universities provide three key value points for learners and society (see Figure 3): content creation and navigation, interactions between learners and faculty, and accreditation. â George Siemens

But these are changing rapidly.

Good content is available on the net
Communication (conversation) happens on the net (participatory pedagogies.)
We've still got the lock on accreditation but this might be changing

Participatory Learning

IT tends to be top-down, designer determined, administratively driven, commercially fashioned. In participatory learning, out- comes are typically customizable by the participants.