FYI.
-stephanie
(I also have another obligation today).
-----Original Message-----
This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from: ccrystal@virginia.eud
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From the issue dated December 14, 2001
Unplanned Obsolescence and the New Network Culture
By MARK C. TAYLOR
Although the Internet has been around for a few decades,
widespread debate about online education has coincided with
the rise and fall of the dot-com economy. As the dot-com
frenzy spread, many institutions rushed to find ways to
participate in that "new" economy. Yet their decision to
develop online-education initiatives was usually the result of
a fear of being left behind or losing competitive advantage --
financial or educational -- rather than a coherent educational
philosophy and carefully crafted business strategy.
Furthermore, educators had little understanding of the
implications of the relevant social and economic changes
occurring beyond the academy and the radical implications of
new technologies for teaching and research. All too often,
they saw the World Wide Web as a way to do differently what
they had always done, rather than to do something
significantly different. When the dot-com bubble eventually
burst, many members of the educational establishment took smug
satisfaction in what they regarded as the inevitable demise of
"e-Ed."
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the dot-com
meltdown marks the end of online education. Fundamental and
irreversible change has occurred; we are in the midst of an
extraordinary transition that will affect every aspect of
higher education. While such developments can be described in
many ways, they might best be understood as the emergence of a
new network culture.
The networks creating our altered situation include but
surpass the Internet. In the past several decades, the
evolution of digital capitalism along with multimedia
conglomerates has created an information-entertainment complex
with unprecedented global power. Information circulating in
worldwide webs has become the "substance" of new social,
political, economic, and even biological processes. Such
networks harbor both creative and destructive possibilities.
One of the important lessons of September 11 is that the same
information, financial, and media networks that form the
foundation of global capitalism also make global terrorism
possible. Whether operating for good or ill within such
expanding global networks, walls, which once seemed secure,
become permeable webs that both allow and require new
communication systems, circulation patterns, and
organizational structures.
To appreciate the scope of the changes, we should recognize
that the current organization of the university and structure
of the curriculum have remained remarkably consistent for more
than 200 years. When Kant formulated the blueprint for the
modern university in "The Conflict of the Faculties" (1798),
he took the industrial factory, organized for mass production,
as his model. Academic divisions and departments, Kant
suggested, reflected the division of labor necessary for
efficient production. Courses, rolling off the assembly line,
were prepackaged like homogeneous products for mass
consumption.
Not that Kant extended the economic logic of the market to the
entire university. To the contrary, he divided the university
into the "higher faculties" (law, medicine, and theology),
which were practically oriented, and the "lower faculty"
(consisting of most of what is now included in the arts,
humanities, and sciences), whose responsibility for criticism
required their protection from market forces and practical
concerns. Although we have seen numerous variations,
modifications, and extensions of the model Kant defined, his
logic still informs the basic structure of knowledge and the
organization of the university today.
With the advent of network culture, however, that logic is
obsolete. We must rethink the entire educational process,
including:
Teaching and research. For higher-education institutions and
companies interested in long-term benefits rather than
short-term gains, the dot-com crash created the opportunity to
explore online education more patiently and carefully. In the
Internet world, the time from conception to launch for
start-ups has generally been no more than 18 months -- simply
not long enough to devise new pedagogical strategies necessary
for online education. With the meltdown, things have slowed
down, and we can now establish processes for producing courses
that take full advantage of new media.
As colleges and universities are discovering, however,
creating viable online courses is difficult and expensive.
Effective online education is not, as the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology proposes, simply streaming video and
putting course material online. New hardware and software
technologies combine with multimedia -- from graphics, audio,
and video to complex models, simulations, and animation -- to
create novel pedagogical resources and possibilities. Online
education, in other words, does not replicate the classroom;
nor is it an alternative form of the traditional book. When
bits become your "ink," it is necessary to write and teach
with words, sounds, and images.
While the transformation of content is important, e-Ed alters
the structure of instruction and learning even more radically.
Online courses no longer have to be organized linearly or
sequentially but can be set up to allow multiple paths through
the materials and remain open-ended in ways that permit links
with other online courses and educational resources.
Consider, for example, a course on money. While exploring
traditional economic issues, the course might also include the
historical development of money, from its primitive forms
through precious metals and paper to electronic currency and
derivatives. Literature (texts like Edgar Allan Poe's "The
Gold Bug," Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Andre Gide's
The Counterfeiters, and William Gaddis's JR), art (the work of
Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, J.S.G. Boggs, and Jeff Koons), and
philosophy (the writings of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Georg
Simmel) could be used to broaden and enrich the subject. With
the expansive resources of the World Wide Web, one can cross
and crisscross traditional disciplinary boundaries in ways
that generate new insights.
As more courses go online, it will also be possible to move
between and among different courses. People who need to review
calculus to understand economic analysis could click on the
relevant mathematics course. In a curriculum without walls,
all courses form one complex course that permits immediate
access. As students become more Internet- and media-savvy,
they will demand such courses.
As elsewhere in e-commerce, mass production in education will
give way to mass customization. Instead of being homogeneous
products, courses could be crafted and modified to meet the
needs of different individuals. Students will be able to
assemble their own courses from the offerings of different
professors; they will have more control over not only when and
where they learn, but also how and what they learn. While
traditional classrooms can no more replicate e-Ed than e-Ed
can replace the "real presence" of teachers and students,
course content and pedagogical strategies in bricks-and-mortar
institutions will have to be modified to reflect the changing
structure of knowledge and new ways of learning.
Similarly, in research, the World Wide Web transforms not only
the form of research and communication but also the content of
what is investigated. Both the extent and the speed of
scholarly exchange are increasing in ways that erode old
disciplinary boundaries and promote new areas of
investigation.
The relationships between the biological and information
sciences, on the one hand, and the arts and humanities, on the
other, provide important examples of the far-reaching
implications of such developments. Emerging interdisciplinary
research will call us to rethink the relationship between
nature and culture. Instead of reducing nature to culture, or
vice versa, a new approach would analyze their intricate
interrelation and codetermination. If successful, that
approach would provide a way out of the "science wars," which
make it impossible for many scientists and humanists to take
each other seriously.
The acceleration of communication renders traditional print
media inadequate and significantly alters the hierarchy of
teaching and research. The products of authors and instructors
who take advantage of the possibilities created by new
software will become increasingly indistinguishable. If online
teaching is, in effect, publication, the long-standing
privilege of publication in hiring, promotion, and
institutional prestige will have to be re-evaluated. As
e-education becomes more sophisticated, colleges and
universities will be under increasing pressure to give
professional credit for online courses similar to that for
traditional published materials. Which is more valuable to an
institution or society -- a book or an article read by 75
like-minded specialists in a subfield or a course taken by
10,000 students of all ages around the world?
Curriculum. New technologies are also transforming the
organization of knowledge. In our emerging network culture,
independent disciplines and departments are as obsolete as the
industrial logic they presuppose. The 200-year-old structure
of the curriculum has finally begun to change.
One way to think about the difference between industrial and
network organization is as the contrast between modules and
nodes. The module is separate, distinct, and linear; the node
is relational, connected, and nonlinear. Instead of divisions
and departments comprising courses hierarchically ordered and
sequentially arranged, imagine multiple nodes organized
nonhierarchically with manifold connections to other nodes in
a curriculum, which is constantly changing. Each node is
formed by the intersection of many lines of investigation.
During this transitional period, trajectories of inquiry will
emerge from established divisions and departments. The trend
is evident in the growing popularity of interdepartmental
courses and interdisciplinary approaches. While those
initiatives are an improvement on the hyper-specialized
approaches of the past, they are just the beginning.
Technological changes will eventually call into question the
very nature and structure of disciplines and departments.
As the webs in which we are entangled become more complex, it
becomes more productive to think of nodes in terms of
problems, themes, or issues rather than disciplines. Take, for
example, the important area of complexity studies. A node
devoted to complexity would bring together people working in
the natural and social sciences as well as the arts and
humanities to explore theoretical questions and consider
practical problems.
Other nodes might include: law and justice, mind and brain,
art and technology, health and disease, media and politics,
water, violence, cities, language, and waste. Such nodes
should be established for a set period of time, after which
they would change significantly or end. Since nothing is
permanent in the evolving ecology of knowledge, a curriculum
that is hypertextual can adapt to shifts occurring both within
and beyond the university. As the rate of curricular change
accelerates, the question of what is worth teaching and
learning constantly must be rethought.
Internal organization and governance. Once the lines that
separate divisions and departments are permeable, the internal
organization of traditional colleges and universities must
become much more fluid. The gradual decline of established
disciplines and increasingly rapid faculty turnover will have
a significant impact on university governance.
In fact, the changing structure of knowledge and evolving
organization of the curriculum will require a different type
of faculty. Survival in emerging network culture -- where
fixed disciplines and subjects give way to curricular flux --
requires an intellectual agility and adaptability that tenure,
in most cases, tends to inhibit. Toward this end, tenure
should -- and will -- be abolished. In place of the two-tiered
system of nontenured and tenured appointments, a single system
of renewable term appointments for the entire faculty should
be developed.
Paradoxically, the proliferation of distributed information
and communication networks will lead to relatively more
centralized decision-making processes. As faculty power
decreases, the power of the administration will increase.
While this shift can have certain disadvantages for faculty
members, it will make decision-making more efficient and
responsive to new societal demands.
The administrative changes will also have financial
implications. With the cost of education growing and the trend
toward privatization continuing, more faculty members will
become engaged in fund raising. Since government and
foundations cannot provide necessary resources, virtually
everyone involved in the education business will have to
become entrepreneurs.
Such entrepreneurial activity will not be limited to the
natural sciences, where it is already well established, but
will extend to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. To
create effective online courses and multimedia works,
humanists need expensive research-and-development labs,
technicians, and assistants. In the absence of agencies like
the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of
Health (which provide significant money for equipment and
technical support for scientists), and with little prospect of
support from institutions with limited budgets, people working
in the arts and humanities will increasingly have to cultivate
private donors.
External collaboration. Moreover, to survive in the network
culture, competitors will increasingly have to cooperate. For
at least 200 years, each higher-education institution has
conceived of itself as a relatively self-contained whole with
considerable autonomy. As costs increase and available
resources decrease, that tradition is coming to an end; at a
growing number of institutions, departments are being
consolidated or cut and divisions eliminated.
It is no longer possible or perhaps even desirable for all
institutions to offer every subject. New technologies enable
colleges, universities, and cultural institutions to work
together regionally, nationally, and internationally. Such
cooperation can range from outsourcing particular courses or
subjects to formal interinstitutional arrangements. In
addition to an initiative like Western Governors University,
we should explore the creation of more hybrids of virtual and
traditional education at the regional level.
When formal and informal arrangements extend beyond
geographical regions to national and international networks,
both human resources and curricular possibilities expand
exponentially. Because any subject can now be taught by any
faculty member anywhere and anytime, in education, as in
industry, the possibility of "offshore" production will lead
to a decrease in the power of the local work force.
For example, more-sophisticated software now makes it
unnecessary for all teaching assistants to be on-site.
Graduate students and younger faculty members in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and South America now can assist professors in the
United States, and vice versa. The growing pressure to
unionize teaching assistants creates the likelihood that
colleges and universities will collaborate by forming pools of
online teaching assistants who can work with faculty members
and students from remote locations. (Any such arrangements
would have to be fashioned in ways to avoid monopolistic
practices.) Or they will outsource ancillary instructional
responsibilities to for-profit companies, which can provide
and manage high-quality assistants more effectively and
economically without the threat of labor disruption.
As educational collaboration becomes more global, it will also
be necessary to devise new systems of credit and
accreditation. Just as students will be able to customize
particular courses, so they will be able to tailor their
entire education by selecting from a globally networked
curriculum. Is an education in which students are required to
take the majority of their courses at Harvard University or
Williams College better than an education in which students
can take some courses from resident faculty members but most
of their courses from the best faculty members and artists at
the University of Copenhagen, the University of Oxford, Keio
University, Qinghua University, the University of San Marcos,
or the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra?
In education, as in currency markets, floating exchange rates
will allow for adjustments in credit among competing
institutions. Although many students will continue to take
most of their courses at one institution, the pressure for the
liberalization of credit policies will grow as it becomes
easier to study "abroad" while remaining at home. In all
likelihood, some institutions will enter into multilateral
exchange agreements and others will rely on for-profit
international credit brokers.
Many faculty members fear that online education will be driven
solely by the profit motive and hence will "contaminate" the
educational mission of institutions. But an institution must
be economically viable to survive. Increasingly, colleges and
universities will have to team up with nonacademic partners to
create new revenue streams through patents on research, work
for hire, and marketing products and services.
Contractual agreements among faculty members, universities,
and private industry, which are, of course, already well
established in the natural and some social sciences, will
extend to the entire faculty. When working in a digital
environment, artists and humanists can produce materials for
the media and entertainment industries. Is a video game on Las
Vegas, or an interactive computer animation of the battles of
Alexander the Great, scholarship or entertainment? Is a
multimedia program in art history developed for the AARP more
or less valuable than a similar lecture course for
18-year-olds? New products like these can be either created by
faculty members and sold or commissioned by business for
specific markets.
The more that educational institutions learn about online
education, however, the more they realize that they face a
difficult dilemma. They cannot afford to ignore the new
market, yet they also cannot afford the high cost of producing
state-of-the-art online courses -- which is often less like
streaming videos of lectures than it is like producing
full-length PBS documentaries. Again, collaboration will be
required: Colleges and universities should, and will, form
partnerships and alliances among themselves, as well as with
responsible companies committed to both educational excellence
and economic viability.
Peril and opportunity are always intertwined, and never more
so than in today's world of higher education. Within and
beyond the academy, committed traditionalists confidently
argue that the dot-com meltdown shows that the opposition
between the "old" and "new" economies was specious from the
outset. Yet the technologies enabling the new economy are
changing the old economy so thoroughly that the distinction
between old and new is misleading. Just as there is no part of
the economy that is not transformed by new technologies, so
there is no aspect of education that will not change
significantly in network culture.
Although the transformations I have described seem inevitable
to me, my experience over the past decade on the local,
national, and international levels leaves me with no illusions
about the difficulty of implementing them. Too many educators
and educational institutions continue to oppose fundamental
change and remain committed to outdated models of, and
strategies for, higher education. The resulting inertia will
be difficult to overcome. Yet those with eyes to see and the
imagination to understand the changes now occurring can look
forward to unprecedented opportunities; those who ignore or
resist these changes unwittingly court their own unplanned
obsolescence.
Mark C. Taylor is a professor of humanities at Williams
College and a co-founder of the Global Education Network, a
company that works with colleges and professors to create
online courses. He is theauthor of The Moment of Complexity:
Emerging Network Culture, published this month by the
University of Chicago Press.
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Copyright 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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