e-Education: Partnerings Save the Day
Bob Jensen at Trinity University
Warning: Although this document is on the Internet, it was intended for use in my laptop during my presentations. Most of the links are to my laptop files since I do not want to delay a presentation waiting for a live connection. In many instances, however, I also provide the Internet links. With this warning I will now provide you with the URL of this document. Go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/081300.htm
Introduction
Types of Prestige
Partnerings
Virtual Universities and Online
Education/Training
Accreditation Issues
Web Hosting of Online
Courses and Degree Programs
A Crystal Ball Look Into the Future
Perhaps it is the accountant in me, but when operational revenue grows by over $100 million in just a few years in any university, I take notice! What is becoming clear to me as prestige universities go online is that the revenue potential is a (probably "the") driving force. What amazed me in some discussions that I had in Philadelphia last week is how profitable the online programs are becoming to universities with top brand names. For example, in Stanford's online engineering and computer science training and education courses (you can get a prestigious and asynchronous Masters of Engineering degree online from Stanford) the online revenues exceed $100 million. At Columbia University the numbers are in the same $100 million ballpark from online operations. What is even more important is that the mature mission (traditional onsite education) in these universities will have very limited revenue growth whereas the newer online mission has unbounded growth potential. The cash cows from newer online programs are already feeding new developments and partnerings such as the amazing Fathom knowledge portal at Columbia University --- See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q3.htm#Fathom
Clearly, onsite faculty cannot deliver credit courses to thousands or millions of students worldwide. The growth models vary, but the leading model entails having the university do the following things:
- develop each course,
- own each course, and
- be responsible for academic standards when its online courses are delivered by corporate instructors who actually do the instructor-student communications and assign grades.
Two types of corporations are being formed for corporate course delivery. One type entails a venture corporation commenced by a university (I think you can now buy stock in Duke's new corporation). The other type entails partnering with a wide-reaching existing corporation such as UNext (that now owns an accredited university called Cardean). You can read more about such happenings at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm#Prestige (By the way, the Columbia University professor (Michael Kirschenheiter) who developed Columbia's UNext online course and an executive (Steve Orpurt) from UNext who presented modules in my Philadelphia workshops convinced me that UNext is a quality operation at this early point in time.)
Working with UNext to develop a Columbia University course | |
Problem Based Learning and course testing process | Click Here for MP3 Audio |
Why prestige universities & faculty want to go online | Click Here for MP3 Audio |
Columbia owns the course & must maintain academic standards | Click Here for MP3 Audio |
A top administrator at the huge state University of XXXXX just phoned me to ask how schools like XXXXX should proceed into this new world. I don't have all the answers, but my first recommendation is for University of XXXXX to partner with similar schools such as ZZZZZ that have huge and powerful alumni connections providing access to top management in many households, corporations, and government. The executive training and education market alone is estimated at $65 billion (which should not all be lost to only a handful of Ivy league online programs).
I am still contemplating if and how I would recommend that small liberal arts universities position themselves in the online "business." If anybody has any ideas, I would like some fresh ideas to take to a presentation that I must do at VVVVV University in a few weeks. Some type of partnering is probably the answer amidst the competition that is emerging from ivy-league type schools. Trinity University might consider its strong connections in Latin America and South America if it decided to partner with other schools to deliver education in the Southern Hemisphere.
In any case, I would like to recommend that all faculty in all parts of the world read a new philosophical paper by Mark Taylor.
Featured Document of the Week (in my forthcoming August 29 edition of New Bookmarks)
"Useful Devils," by Mark C. Taylor, Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- <http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html>
This is a heavy duty article that I think every educator should read with care from beginning to end. It deals with very controversial issues beginning with the first " modern university" (The University of Berlin) that commenced in 1810.
Immanuel Kant developed the blueprint for this university in a work entitled The Conflict of the Faculties, published in 1798. Kant began his analysis by arguing:
Whoever it was that first hit on the notion of a university and proposed that a public institution of this kind be established, it was not a bad idea to handle the entire content of learning (really, the thinkers devoted to it) by mass production, so to speak-by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee, and all of these together would form a kind of learned community called a university (or higher school). The university would have a certain autonomy (since only scholars can pass judgment on scholars as such) and accordingly it would be authorized to perform certain functions through its faculties
In this remarkably prescient passage, Kant associates higher education with mass production and, by extension, with what eventually becomes the logic of Fordism. Accordingly, the university is structured like an assembly line with discrete divisions and departments turning out uniform products with predetermined values. The curriculum and the education of students are linear processes, which are programmed by the producer. University professors are divided between so-called higher and lower faculties. The “higher” faculties are law, medicine, and theology, which represent what we today call professional schools. It is important to note that the university Kant designed is supported by the state. The purpose of the higher faculties is to provide the educated citizens that the government needs to maintain a functional society. The “lower” faculty, which Kant defines as philosophical, comprises what we now label the arts and sciences. The higher faculties are charged with providing practical education, whereas the responsibility of the lower faculty is disinterested inquiry and critical reflection ...
There really is too much in this article to capture in brief quotations. But I will quote the closing paragraph:
Change is never easy and always threatening. Yet change is what keeps institutions as well as people alive. Unfortunately, no institution is more resistant to change than the college and university. Perhaps it has always been so, but now time seems to be running out. If colleges and universities do not overcome their smug satisfaction with how they do business, the Michael Milkens of the world will indeed eat their lunch. The challenge that educators face is to turn the useful devils of business and technology to their own ends. If usefulness is a devil, it’s a devil we must learn to dance with or educational institutions will become more obsolete than they already are. This is neither a threat nor an ultimatum; it is just a fact-a brute fact. And it’s time to face this fact directly and honestly.
Types of (Mostly Profitable) Prestige Partnerings
Corporations Provide | Universities Provide | Leading Example | Other Examples |
Student
Funding Students |
General
Programs Couse Mangement Course Dev. Funding Accreditation Full Logos |
Stanford's
ADEPT Asynchronous Asynchronous Distance Education Project with thousands of graduates and the first prestige degree program on the web |
Duke's
GEMBA GEMBA FAQs Synchronous Duke No Longer Calls it GEMBA, but it is still the hottest distance executive MBA program in the world Other Examples |
Student
Funding Students Some Course Materials Knowledge Bases Full Logos |
Dedicated
Programs Course Managements Course Funding Accreditation Full Logos |
E&Y Partners |
PwC
Partners
|
Course
Consulting Media & Delivery Instructors Course Management Course Funding Student Funding |
Course
Design Academic Standards Course Ownership Full Logos |
UNext
UNext
Home Page |
Pensare |
Instructors Course Management Course Funding Cases Videos Knowledge Bases Full Logos |
Students Student Funding Full Logos |
Academic Association
Sponsorships
ACS |
Harcourt
University
Morningside Ventures |
University-Owned Corporations
Course Consulting |
Course
Design Academic Standards Course Ownership Full Logos |
Duke
Corporate Ed.
Morningside Ventures |
Fatham |
Question
What is Bob Jensen's vision for Columbia University's Fathom and similar
knowledge portals?
Answer
My vision for Fathom is the linking of the Fathom knowledge portal to BeVoice
technology where anyone in the world can simply phone in both training and
education queries. For example, suppose you would like to hear an opera
expert at Indiana University analyze a particular act of a Verdi opera
(assuming that one day expert commentaries will be placed in the Fatham
database). You would simply dial into Fathom and speak out what you are
seeking much like you ask for driving directions or stock information from a
virtual woman at BeVoice. Keep in mind that the virtual woman can
translate your voice into a knowledge base query and then translate the bits
and bytes of knowledge into a very pleasing human voice. The BeVoice
website is at http://www.b-voice.com/voicelab/
(I suggest that you listen to at least one demo at
BeVoice if you want to be impressed beyond belief.)
Laptop Link to BeVocal
Demo BeVocal
The main Fathom Website, without any BeVoice technology to date, is at http://www.fathom.com/
INSTITUTIONS PARTNER FOR FIRST TIME TO CREATE INTERACTIVE
KNOWLEDGE COMPANY: FATHOM POISED TO REDEFINE
SCOPE OF ONLINE LEARNING
Political Science, Cambridge University Press, The British Library,
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History,
and The New York Public Library
Six of the world's leading educational and cultural institutions announced today that they will create Fathom, a new company formed to launch the premier site for knowledge and education on the web. Fathom will present the best public content and courses of universities, libraries, and museums on a wide variety of professional, cultural, and academic subjects. The consortium's website, Fathom.com, will introduce the first home for authenticated knowledge on the Internet, serving a worldwide audience of business and individual users.
Some Knowledge Portals
Some key knowledge portal links
Fathom Partners
Columbia University
LSE (Enterprise LSE)
Cambridge University Press
British Library
New York Public Library
Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History
Fathom@Columbia --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/00/04/fathom.html
Fathom@LSE (London School of Economics) --- http://www.lse.ac.uk/Press/fathom.htm
The Wharton Knowledge Portal
Knowledge@Wharton --- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?noid=yes&intro=yes
For more Fathom and Knowledge Portals in General see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
Corporations Provide | Professors Provide | Example 1 | Example 2 |
Course Funding Resources Multimedia Development |
Students Cases Videos Knowledge Bases Proxie Logos |
Quisic
20 Courses for UNC Courses for any School |
Concord
School of Law
Harvard sues to stop others from following in Arthur Millers video steps |
Ninth House Network buys up
intellectual property rights of leading scholars http://www.ninthhouse.com/home.htm The new E-Learning Resource Site is described at http://www.ninthhouse.com/news/press/pr00/q3/august15.htm
|
The Haas School of Business at the University of
California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan Business School, and
the Darden School at the University of Virginia will offer each other's
students classes specializing in e-business.
"So much of business education is the network-building between the students," said Haas Dean Laura Tyson. "What is nice here is that people in each location will now be able to have a new selection of classes to choose from, and a new selection of people to work with." "In essence, this program is not only about sharing knowledge but about sharing communities," |
JEBNET: Jesuit colleges team up to
offer onsite and online programs http://www.jebnet.org/ (Includes an MBA program in China.) |
Virtual Universities and Online Education/Training
Type of Degree | Scope of Service | Accredited | Non-accredited |
Comprehensive Degree Programs | Onsite and Online | Open
University Penn State's World Campus
UCLA |
? |
Comprehensive Degree Programs | Online | Motorola University | WGU |
Selected Degree Programs | Online | ArsDigita
University Jones International Duke's GEMBA Wharton/IBM |
University
of Phoenix
Frederick Taylor Univ. - Regis University |
Training Certificates | Online | Hundreds of Programs with Prestige Logo Certifications Such as Microsoft Certified | CBOE Thousands of Programs from Corporations and Extension Programs in Colleges and Universities |
Military | Online and Offline | U.S. Military | U.S. Military |
Web Hosting of Online Courses and Degree Programs
Go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm#CourseAuthoring
For general background on accreditation, you can enter the search term "Accreditation" at http://ifap.ed.gov/dev_csb/new/srchsite.nsf/Web+Search+Simple?OpenForm
There are three sources of accreditation:
Type
1
Accrediting agencies of the government or sanctioned by the government (for
example the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)
has a government sanction) Accreditation is a tough
issue that I have not researched fully. I suspect that the main
accreditation process must use one of the Federally-approved agencies. You
can see a listing at http://ifap.ed.gov/85256508006391d1/005fd53d0d39dd4285256508006391ed/852565a7005d473f85256675004fbec9?OpenDocument
Type
2
Accrediting agencies that carry the logo of prestige (for example, training
courses that have Microsoft certification)
Type
3
Accrediting agencies that start with neither a prestige logo nor government
blessing but attempt to build a reputation through standards and membership.
For example, a relatively popular accrediting agency called Association of
Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) is a Type 3 agency at http://www.acbsp.org/.
Richard Newmark forwarded the following information to me about the relatively new Association for Online Excellence:
For a new entity, AOAE has been quite busy -- they've accredited schools from Adams State College to Youngstown State University. ( http://www.aoaex.org/pbo.htm )
You might want to check to see if your university is on the list -- and the university legal department might want to contact AOAE.
On a related note, tomorrow (Tuesday July 18) I'll be offering an online chat focusing on how to evaluate school websites from 1 to 3, Central time. Drop by http://www.distancelearn.about.com/mpchat.htm to join in.
.Kristin Evenson Hirst
About.com Guide to Distance Learning
http://distancelearn.about.com/
email: distancelearn.guide@about.com
AOAE has a relatively long list accredited programs, including some major
colleges and universities.
Association
for Online Excellence
Question: What major publishing company is seeking full
accreditation of its corporate university?
Click here for the answer!
Ivy Online
Ivy Online Article by Todd Woody
Major Universities Have Thousands of Courses Online
eCollege --- Search over 500 accredited courses offered online from over 100 Universities
LearnLinc (Rensselaer ) --- combination of synchronous and asynchronous
A Crystal Ball Look Into the Future
Wireless Audio and Video Knowledge Portals --- BeVocal
Knowledge Portals --- Columbia U's Fatham
Bob Jensen's Advice to New Faculty
Judith Boettcher in Syllabus, June 1999, 18-24 Judith Boettcher is affiliated with CREN. She predicts the following scenarios (which appear to be heavily in line with the emerging WGU programs mentioned above):
1. A "career university" sector will be in place (with important partnerships of major corporations with prestige universities).
2. Most higher education institutions, perhaps 60 percent, will have teaching and learning management software systems linked to their back office administration systems.
3. New career universities will focus on certifications, modular degrees, and skill sets.
4. The link between courses and content for courses will be broken.
5. Faculty work and roles will make a dramatic shift toward specialization (with less stress upon one person being responsible for the learning material in an entire course).
(Outsourcing Academics http://www.outsourcing-academics.com/ )6. Students will be savvy consumers of educational services (which is consistent with the Chronicle of Higher Education article at http://chronicle.com/free/99/05/99052701t.htm ).
7. The tools for teaching and learning will become as portable and ubiquitous as paper and books are today.
An abstract from On the Horizon http://horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/login.asp
Will Universities Be Relics? What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object? John W. Hibbs
Peter Drucker predicts that, in 30 years, the traditional university will be nothing more than a relic. Should we listen or laugh? Hibbs examines Drucker's prophesy in the light of other unbelievable events, including the rapid transformation of the Soviet Union "from an invincible Evil Empire into just another meek door-knocker at International Monetary Fund headquarters." Given the mobility and cost concerns of today's students, as well as the growing tendency of employers to evaluate job-seekers' competencies rather than their institutional affiliations, Hibbs agrees that the brick-and-mortar university is doomed to extinction.