The Impending Demise of the University
Last week I wrote a substantial essay for the Edge arguing that the universities are entering a period of crisis.
I argued that is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn. The reaction on Twitter, mainly from students has been enormously positive. So far two academics have written critiques of my views at the Edge.
However because the Edge does not enable readers to comment, I'd like to know what you think. Please read a summary below and then check out the Edge article and let the world know what you think here on HuffPost:
The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still common. It's part of a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education.
Students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities are to remain relevant, they will have to change.Professors will have to abandon the traditional lecture, and start listening and conversing with the students -- shifting from a broadcast style and adopting an interactive one. They should be encouraging students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor's store of information. They need to encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the university. Finally, they need to tailor the style of education to their students' individual learning styles.
Some leading educators are calling for this kind of massive change; one of these is Richard Sweeney, university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He says students are smart but impatient. They like to collaborate and they reject one-way lectures. While some educators view this as pandering to a generation, Sweeney is firm: "They want to learn, but they want to learn only from what they have to learn, and they want to learn it in a style that is best for them."
This is not fundamentally about technology per se. Rather it represents a change in the relationship between students and teachers in the learning process.
In the old model, teachers taught and students were expected to absorb vast quantities of content. Education was about absorbing content and being able to recall it on exams. You graduated and you were set for life - just "keeping" up in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you're set for say, 15 minutes. If you took a technical course half of what you learned in the first year may be obsolete by the 4th year. What counts is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, critically evaluate it; to apply research to solving problems; to collaborate and communicate.
This challenge to the existing order raises a deeper issue -- the purpose of the university"The time has come for some far reaching changes to the university, our model of pedagogy, how we operate, and our relationship to the rest of the world," says Luis M. Proenza, president of the University of Akron.
He asks a provocative question: Why should a university student be restricted to learning from the professors at the university he or she is attending. True, students can obviously learn from intellectuals around the world through books, or via the Internet. Yet in a digital world, why shouldn't a student be able to take a course from a professor at another university?
Proenza thinks universities should use the Internet to create a global centre of excellence. In other words, choose the best courses you have and link them with the best at a handful of universities around the world to create an unquestionably best-in-class program for students. Students would get to learn from the world's greatest minds in their area of interest - either in the physical classroom, or online. This global academy would be also be open to anyone online. This is a beautiful example of the collaboration I described in the book I co-authored, Wikinomics.The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate, is challenging not only the lecture-driven teaching traditions of the university, but also the very notion of a walled-in institution that excludes large numbers of people. Why not allow a brilliant grade 9 student to take first-year math, without abandoning the social life of his high school? Why not deploy the interactive power of the internet to transform the university into a place of life-long learning?
Read the full article at The Edge.
Don Tapscott is the author of 13 books on new technology in society, most recently Grown Up Digital. He recently completed a $4 million dollar investigation of the Net Generation. He is Chairman of the think tank nGenera Insight and an Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. On Twitter @dtapscott
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Where has Don Tapscott been for the last 50 years and more? During that time the university, at least in the liberal arts, has been inundated by active learning, interactive learning, experiential education and half a dozen other labels for getting students to work together in small groups, share projects with the class, and so on. I've been doing all that stuff for at least 35 years at a state university in Connecticut, especially in an honors program which I directed for ten years.
Recently (I'm retired) I gave a formal lecture in a course on world religions at the same institution. The students were astounded. They had never been given a formal lecture--never. After class several students said it was cool. They appreciated that a professor had actually spent time to prepare a class for them, and they also enjoyed getting a break from listening to the same motor-mouthed classmates babble on about things they knew very little or nothing about. Apparently, to listen to an intelligent and informative lecture in organized paragraphs is not anathema to literate students.
I can relate to what you say. I remember taking a course in the philosophy of education at U of Oregon back in the 60s. The instructor was a classic orator-- in other words he went through all the poses and body positions used by the classic orators starting with the Greeks. It was like watching a gymnastic show except that the lecture itself was darn good also. It turned out to be a wonderful history of philosophy that even this science major enjoyed and remembered.
That is the important part, you were engaged so you remembered. The secret of teaching perhaps, engage your students. Use what the students already love to engage them into your subject. You apparently loved a good orator.
Love
Bette
That's certainly a very important subject - and it has been such for, say, 2500 years now.
And while I don't want to short-circuit the discussion, I must say that I am a bit surprised about the extent to which you apparently think that this is a new problem or question.
There are many new aspects to it: for example the need to deal with overload, with actual limitations in good old literacy, and more generally, the ability to articulate. Yes there is an infinitude of new means at our disposal and I have no doubt that it makes the world smarter on the whole. But in fact it also requires an entirely new work ethic and new standards of intellectual honesty. The previous wave of such discussions sort of got lost along the way of the bursting of the dotcom bubble. But it hasn't reached any valid conclusions, of course.
Maybe we can learn a thing or two from those times 500 years ago when we started printing bibles. Just a thought. Could be that no stone is left unturned and that nobody can predict where we're heading as a result.
After nearly 20 years as first a graduate student instructor and then adjunct faculty at the community college level, I have decided to call it quits. It has become increasingly frustrating for me because I am not seeing these characteristics you describe in students. I have been seeing more and more students who simply want to sign up for a class and get an A and not have to do anything to earn it. They are resistant to discussion, research (unless they can use Google and Wikipedia--no libraries for them!), and anything they suspect might involve work or effort. Certainly there are always one or two students who have that intellectual spark and curiosity who are willing to engage in debate, but overall it's like pulling teeth--and then they blame everyone but themselves for their grades. I don't want to stand up here and lecture, I want us to engage in a conversation and explore and learn. It was making me crazy. I had to get out.
This is my experience, sadly, also, and I am currently teaching at what is supposed to be one of the top-tier public instutitions in the United States.
Students increasingly think of themselves as "consumers" who have "paid for" the "services" of faculty at the university, and since they have paid, they "deserve" an A. It is very frustrating and can wear you down.
But then I do get some students (and they are becoming more and more of a minority with each year that goes by) who honestly engage in their classes and who are trying to learn. They make everything worthwhile.
I think the shift has to be two-way: students have to take responsibility for their own learning, and not necessarily expect the type of "edutainment" that this article is advocating.
One issue I have regarding "They should be encouraging students to discover for themselves" is that students often "discover" factually erroneous information. I have observed this on many occasions. It may be more fun, but it isn't rigorous learning. Although a professor may not be 100% accurate 100% of the time, at least they are somewhat vetted through hiring. Students who learn from one another, wikipedia, blogs, etc. may end up with a degree in their field and yet have no mastery in that field because what they learned is in error. A couple generations of that and you have some real problems.
First, let me say I appreciate your desire to learn how other minds put meaning to your words, Mr. Tapscott, by giving us a voice here. Minds unlimited by the belief systems most academics are limited to in any critique. As a graduate student at Walden University, an online platform, and former student at a face to face (f2f) bricks and mortar community college, I have experienced both forms of delivery of education today. My initial goal in joining the Walden learning community was an idea of individual education plans (IEPs) based on neural development for readiness of content presentation. In other words teach children as their brains become functionally developed to optimally process the data, as indicated by fMRIs. A shallow but effective way to get my meaning clear is present math to girls later and language arts to boys later so there is less frustration and losing interest in learning. One size fits all just doesn’t fit, for me either. I’ll go read the article now and possible post more, keeping to the limits set by Huff post of word count.
Love
Bette
I'm afraid you're very right about students being "impatient
The critical aspect of a lecture is that the Prof has the expertise to understand and present information in a structured and informed manner- I've found students simply take what they find on the web without having the skills or knowledge to effectively filter out the rubbish and critically assess the rest. Impatient? Yes, many are; and they want only what's needed for when it's needed; and why bother with "education
As for your "global" University that links a few of the very best and makes them available for all. It's clear you've not thought that through. Think educational TV- a few lectures on the most popular topics, little for the more obscure and challenging subjects. And tens of thousands of students for those most effective lecturers. Effectiveness would rapidly diminish as their interactivity evaporates.
Forty years ago I was teaching at Boston University, where undergraduate learning was almost entirely lecture oriented. Students tended to study to the exam, and tried to find out what I thought so they could get better grades by pleasing me.
In 1972, I founded a small college in Burlington, Vermont (which is still there!), and the corner stone of our academic philosophy was having written, UN-graded evaluations of all academic learning activities. It took us a few years to get the kinks out of the process, but it continues today. That, and universally small discussion seminars as opposed to lectures began to produce amazing results.
Students came to us brainwashed into thinking that we instructors were the masters of their learning, and that they, the students, were our servants. Once they were challenged to challenge us in class, and then when they had an equal say in their evaluation of their progress toward the goals of the course and hence their academic credit, their passivity evaporated, and they turned into fierce, life-long learners.
Doing something similar with all the tools now available on line could be truly revolutionary!
I would agree...it
Combine low levels of academic expectations with the parents who stick up for their kids every time there's a problem in school, and you've got a great recipe for building brats who expect an A just for having good self-esteem. As kids, my husband and I knew that trouble in school meant trouble at home. Our son knew that as well. Part of preparation for life is learning to roll with the punches and get back in the ring. Parents who continually alleviate the suffering caused by a bad grade or bad behavior do their children no favors.
Bottom line: this societal issue aggregates at the post-secondary level. While a good instructor employs many teaching strategies, there is no substitute for the student understanding what it means to work.
If anyone finds anything new in Tapscott's piece, they are either much younger than he or they do not teach the Liberal Arts. Beyond Freshman English, students have been collaborating for decades. At the better universities, especially those in whose classrooms there is a sympodium, even Freshman students have seen professor interact with them at more than just a lectern. I passed Tapscott's observations on to a colleague of mine, who responded:
"Observation #1
People have been saying this stuff for 20 years; so if he's an example of the new, he's dated.
Observation #2
He's adjunct in management, a field that, like education, has no content. He does not understand us. The idea that you give someone a Faulkner or Morrison novel and say, "Go read the Internet" and come out with anything like a reasonable comprehension is laughable. I know because I watch students try it all the time."
Enough said. The last thing we need is a lecture from someone who believes that his own new experience is a new nationwide discovery.
Whie some may dislike the changes in the education business caused by large scale use of the PC, education will change as the news business has changed. This is going to be an interesting, if not exciting, series of changes.
I attended a Big Ten university from 1965 to 1970. I experienced everything from videotaped lectures played six times a day (go when you want) to small, extremely interactive classes. I got something worthwhile out of most of them. The best class of all was a three hour class on writing. Originally scheduled for one hour each MWF, the professor (with the approval of the students) rearranged the class to 2 hours on Monday, at which a writing assignment was given and discussed. Wednesday's class was cancelled, and each student had a one-on-one session with the professor on Friday, during which the professor reviewed and critiqued the student's written assignment. This meant no putting off writing the assignment and no homework on the weekend. I got an A and learned more about writing from that experience than I had ever hoped to learn in a college class.
I think variety and flexibility are keys to making college a meaningful experience. Today's technology makes more approaches to learning available, but it's up to the teacher to find something that works well.
"Why not deploy the interactive power of the internet to transform the university into a place of life-long learning?"
I am reminded of a wonderful saying I picked up somewhere: "Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet."
The old argument used to be that students don't need faculty, that they could simply pick up the same textbooks and learn the material on their own. Theoretically true yet how well did that work? Now, we are faced with the idea that the internet could be fashioned to provide the same material electronically. It is the height of ignorance to overlook the fact that at the same time that same internet provides a hodge-podge of distractions. The 'antique' style of lecturing allows focus (ever wonder why faculty don't like cell phones going off in lecture?) among a group of students who are already notoriously distracted. Asking them to achieve focus in a relatively unstructured, self-paced environment and expecting equal or greater efficiencies of learning is delusional. Self-pacing is a dream that overlooks the harsh reality of actual human behavior.
There's a video presentaton from Professor Wesch at Kansas
http://www
that puts what Tapscott is saying in another format.
How to respond to the problems identified is left to individual instructors who
quickly learn that The University does not value teaching.
Balderdash!
The flippant title, and rather loose usage of the facts of this article concern me greatly. Could we possibly tear ourselves away from such extremes?
Technology has enhanced the classroom; it's helped students to find for themselves tremendous resources to add to professors' and texts' foundations. But God help us if Wickipedia became the norm for higher learning. Critical thinking must be carried out and developed in an interactive environment. As far back as the mid-90's in grad school, this environment was alive and well on the rather humble but excellent Northern Illinois University campus.
I heartily agree.
But let´s get real here. Educated people are hard to control. If You study friedmanic business, You will get all that and more. If You want to be educated, You will have to get back to trying on your own.
Why? - Because what You imply and what should be the basis of modern education ocsts money that absolutely needs to be put into big businesses and shareholder´s pockets.
Do You know what was the first thing real money was spent on after Katrina? - It was to eradicate pubic schools and privatize them. 6500 teachers fired, undertrained teachers with ridiculously low wages got jobs, and eduvcation was kicked just a bit more down the gutter of what's left after profiteers take their share.
You are absolutely right. Especially in teaching students should be treated as intelligent beings and not as veccuums any nerd can pour his drivel into.
But as long as 90% of the people are nothing but disposable work drones to the ones making the rules and taking everything, we will not see them treat students better than raw material for slightly higher qualified work drones.
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