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Everything old is new again
203 Plays7 months ago
Phil, Morgan, and Neil take a look at innovations in academic programs - what is new and what trends are taking root. Is there a reason for so many examples listed coming from more than a decade ago?
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. And boy, we have a busier day than I was expecting. We were just chatting about all the news items that are flying past this week, at least in the U
Innovation in Academic Programs
00:00:26
Speaker
.S. And we're going to try to get to some of those or we'll see how the conversation goes.
00:00:32
Speaker
But the main topic we want to get to is sort of talk about innovation or from the product side. So academic programs that are innovating or doing something different. What are we seeing? If we're not seeing much, why is that?
00:00:48
Speaker
But basically, innovation from academic programs is what we want to talk about as the main topic.
Spotify's Move into Video Courses
00:00:56
Speaker
But with that in mind, let's jump first to some of the key news items that are flying across the desk. I'm trying to think about what's the best way to get started on this. Let's start with an easy one, maybe, the Spotify launching video courses on production, songwriting, et cetera.
00:01:17
Speaker
Is this an ed tech issue that's relevant at all from the academic side of the house? How do you guys see this news? Is it worth paying attention to? I mean, I think it is worth paying attention to by virtue of the fact that I think, and we may go on to this, I think
00:01:39
Speaker
higher education institutions in the uk i think are in a small way playing more in the kind of pot of smaller kinds of offerings so it might bear a relationship to them and similarly institutions over here that have a focus on the arts are getting into online where they might not be playing in that in the past so i think in that sense it has a bit of relevance i mean i i
00:02:05
Speaker
was also interested in it by virtue of the kind of video audio comparison because I have often thought that audio kind of based courses is an area that's underdeveloped and there's been different companies that have sought to do that like Hello Audio and people like that and so the kind of move into video for Spotify was the one thing that
00:02:31
Speaker
piqued my main interest around this but it seems like it's part of a wider strategy where they're kind of offering music videos now and obviously this kind of announcement isn't them creating their own courses from what I understand but actually just working with a bunch of partners including BBC Maestro and Thinkific and I think Skillshare to kind of aggregate some of their courses as well.
Impact of High Production Value Courses
00:02:56
Speaker
So yeah I mean I think it's not of
00:03:00
Speaker
Really, really strong interest to higher education, but it is of interest.
00:03:06
Speaker
I think the high production values of some of these kinds of courses, and obviously I haven't seen the Spotify yet, but I asked for and finally received an annual subscription to Masterclass this year. So I've been taking Masterclass courses and I think they're asynchronous and on different kinds of things and you do them for interest, but I think they do put some pressure on higher ed in terms of an expectation of what a learning experience looks like. So in that sense, I think there is
00:03:36
Speaker
a relevance there, even if it's not the kind of thing that people are going to be doing.
Spotify's Educational Strategy and AI's Influence
00:03:40
Speaker
It's more of a fun thing or a skills-based kind of training for somebody going into the music business. Great. I mean, for me, the biggest question is, well, Neil, it's interesting. You're interested in the video angle. I'm sort of interested in it. My cynical self is like, wait, are they jumping the shark? Are they getting outside of their wheelhouse? And is this something that could
00:04:04
Speaker
end up being part of their downfall in the future, but you know, I'm not convinced of the strategy. Yeah. And it made me think of forays from place. I'm sure Facebook did an online learning thing. Was it Amazon that didn't, there was other examples of kind of these brief forays into online education that haven't worked out. So that is also where my mind went too. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to be positive, Phil. Good. Well, let's, let's stay positive as much as we can.
00:04:34
Speaker
I don't know if you guys actually saw this morning from Inside Higher Ed, but there were two interesting articles on AI and assessment, really. Well, one of them's AI, the other one's a little bit broader, but the one, there's an article arguing that AI has broken higher education assessment.
00:04:55
Speaker
And that seemed like clickbait to me, but it's some instructional designers and instructors at a course and they're giving examples. And if you actually read it and get past the clickbait nature of the title, which by the way, I'm finding more of that inside higher ed lately.
00:05:15
Speaker
It's actually an interesting article. I read it more as there's an opportunity to rethink assessments because of AI, and AI is shooting down or making some of the previous attempts at valid, and so there's an opportunity to rethink it on a positive. Of course, that aligns with one of our previous episodes, but that's the way I read that article. Did either of you guys see that article?
00:05:40
Speaker
I did not. No, I didn't see it. I mean, I think there's two cases to make, isn't there? I think there is a good case to say AI has broken the traditional model of assessment in higher education. And I think there's a positive angle of that. This is going to be a real driver to do things differently and to do things better. But then the flip side of that is that the kind of business model is built on
00:06:05
Speaker
the essay and the exam and therefore, actually, whilst we may talk about the opportunities that it affords for assessment, there's some pretty fundamental challenges to moving that direction as well.
00:06:18
Speaker
Well, the article actually gets into that. So they give a sociology, a very specific example in using a particular model for evaluating sociological learning and how to apply it from a critical reasoning standpoint. And they pointed out since the advent of chat GPT, the results of students being able to define this model and how it applies, like all but one student got it perfect.
00:06:46
Speaker
And so they know things are different. So even though they're doing authentic assessment, per se, something's got to change. So it's an interesting article, particularly for the specifics.
00:06:59
Speaker
I think higher rate assessment needs to be broken. You know, I always think of you mentioned sociology, there's the great sociologist Howard Becker, who once wrote about the problem with student essays, is that they're written by people who know nothing on topics on which they are not interested to be read by people who wouldn't be reading them unless they were being paid to do so. You know, it's sort of a recipe for disaster. So it kind of needs to be broken, and needs to be reformed. And I think we're seeing some interesting things there.
00:07:25
Speaker
Neil, just between you and me and nobody else, this is part of the obsession that I'm talking about. How does Morgan have that off of the top of her head? Not just the who the writer is, but the details of what they said and how it applies. And she hadn't even read this article this morning.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll talk about that later, Phil. Yeah, it's part of what scares me. But welcome back, Morgan. Well, speaking of famous people, Morgan, you were pointing out the economists who recently passed away. Why does that strike your interest? Well, I've read so many of the things and it's Daniel Kahneman of Kahneman and Tversky, you know, Nobel Prize winner written about all kinds of decision making kinds of things. And I've
00:08:11
Speaker
He's had such a huge impact on social science and on other kinds of things. And for me, it's like the day Prince died or something. It's a big loss. And he lived to the ripe old age of 90, and that's
Scandals and Governance Issues in Higher Education
00:08:28
Speaker
great. But he had a giant impact. And perhaps as a small personal memorial to him, I'll go back and read through all his stuff again. Proving my point.
00:08:41
Speaker
Which is great. I mean, I, I make fun of you, but I mean, it's fascinating to have you involved both in writing and on the podcast for this reason, such a variety of viewpoints, but enough of self-congratulations on the podcast. The negative stories that are coming out and it's really flying in the past two days involve the nonprofit conversions.
00:09:03
Speaker
So I wrote about this yesterday for premium subscribers, but University of Arizona Global Campus, yet another mini scandal that's coming out of how that's impacting the University of Arizona. And this time where the president is once again getting caught
00:09:22
Speaker
at best being deceitful. And quite honestly, it's hard to argue that this is not just flat-out lying, where he has essentially come out and saying, there's a lobbyist who's hired for other purposes, foreign country involvement.
00:09:39
Speaker
And was he involved with UAGC? And President Robbins flat-out denies it. Zero involvement. Then the reporters say, well, what about these emails that you're forwarding to them and you're having that lobbyist send it to the California Attorney General about UAGC? And then it's like, well, this is what we really meant.
00:10:01
Speaker
And there are some other things, but it's becoming, I don't know if it's going to get bigger, it should, but the governance scandal at the University of Arizona, which increasingly is not just about overall finances, but UAGC is looking awful.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I don't know what's going to happen, but I think that's relevant. Then I'll throw in the other one. We just got news this morning that the Idaho Senate just refused to pass a bill. They turned down a bill that would have helped enable the acquisition of the University of Phoenix. And there's a pretty strong argument that that deal is now dead as of this morning.
00:10:44
Speaker
that Idaho is not going to be able to acquire the University of Phoenix. And those two stories go together. Because obviously, I think that activists are using one to affect the UAGC story to impact the University of Phoenix. But it also is just an impact on large online programs with tens of thousands of students. So very much a scandal situation.
Franchise Models and Nonprofit Conversions in UK Universities
00:11:11
Speaker
I don't know if you guys had seen those. Well, I know the story yesterday you likely saw, but I don't know if you saw the Phoenix story this morning, but it seems big to me.
00:11:19
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, I think it's just, you know, you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and they will drop. If there's one thing I've learned, especially after going through the experience I went through in the early teens of this at the University of Illinois, when we rapidly went through several chancellors and presidents, and it was a sort of slow drip of scandal that did it. And I suspect we're seeing the same thing here.
00:11:49
Speaker
And I certainly think that's going to discourage and it's intended a lot of the activity to discourage other schools from doing the same nonprofit conversion by a for-profit online university and then turn it into a nonprofit and
00:12:04
Speaker
and work it in there. And Neil, one final thing on the news front, it seems like we're seeing more coverage in the UK arguing or pushing back on the franchise model. Is that something you're seeing a lot of or is that just my selective reading in the UK?
00:12:23
Speaker
No, no, you're right. There's definitely been a focus on franchising. There was a report from, I think it was a national audit office that flagged potential fraud around franchise provision over here. So people, providers,
00:12:43
Speaker
getting money from the government that students had claimed through the kind of loan system onto their books, but the students not really being present at the university. So that has flagged up and that has raised a greater debate. So on the back of the cases of fraud that were flagged up around franchising, there's been a lot more noise around franchising.
00:13:07
Speaker
So there's been universities that do a lot of franchise provision defending it. There's also been more scrutiny around the regulation and the oversight of franchising agreements. And actually all of this
00:13:22
Speaker
a bigger picture sense kind of ties in with where universities are at because franchising provision, you know, although sometimes it's more positively framed as a means in which universities can attract students that they might not attract otherwise, that also brings a financial benefit to universities as well through the kind of the cut that they receive essentially through franchising. So
00:13:44
Speaker
there's a lot going on and a lot of focus on franchising but it's it was mainly driven by the sense that there may be some you know less than good things happening in certain franchise agreements but yeah that's where we're at with it. I'm interested Phil just if I might on the on the two examples that you gave of kind of
00:14:03
Speaker
nonprofits looking at profit conversions. Are those examples of their strategy into kind of moving into online education? Are they looking to acquire a university that's more established in that domain in the private?
00:14:20
Speaker
Is that my understanding? Yeah, but that's a little bit over simplistic. I mean, not your question, but that view, which is sort of common. So for example, the University of Arizona has UA online. They've developed it for years. It seems to be a very solid program. So they've already been an online. It's a few thousand students, but ironically, it's growing.
00:14:42
Speaker
So UAGC, however, it was sort of what I called Mitch Daniels envy. It was presidents in particular who want to say, we want to go big. We want to be known for our massive online thing. So we want to leapfrog efforts and buy institutions that already have 30,000 plus students.
00:15:04
Speaker
That's what you age so it wasn't their beginning into online, but it was there from a presidential level conceit It was so online education conquest kind of territory. Yeah, interesting. Okay. Yeah
00:15:21
Speaker
So and I think Idaho was the same thing now there is a legitimate argument behind a lot of these saying we're land grant universities that in the US, you have a mission to reach out and serve a broad population. And certainly by the numbers by doing this, it really jumps.
00:15:39
Speaker
ahead on how many students are being served. So, I mean, I think that's the legitimate part of the argument here, but it's not typically creating online. It's more of a leapfrogging, moving it up to a level where presidents can brag about it. Yep. Good stuff. Morgan, any contrary views on that?
00:16:01
Speaker
No, not contrary. At least to their credit, they're understanding that it takes a long time to build the big online presence. So they're trying to jumpstart that. But it's also based on not a very deep understanding of which they seem to be proud, in fact.
00:16:18
Speaker
of the space. You know, President Robbins at University of Arizona is actually touting the fact that he knew nothing before he purchased this product. Yeah, I did notice the Sergeant Scholz term this week from him. Yes. Well, all right, so here's my real time proposal. Next week, let's make our main topic is sort of tie these two together, the nonprofit conversions and the franchise
00:16:45
Speaker
issues in the UK, particularly around governance, what it shows about college and university decision making and where they're getting it right, where they're tripping it up. Because I think these are big news stories. So let's do a deeper dive next week. So there's our weekly segue, I guess.
Innovative Online Education Models
00:17:05
Speaker
But with that, and there sort of is a tie in here, let's talk about innovation. So Morgan, lead us in this conversation, trying to look at where programs are doing different things.
00:17:15
Speaker
So what we're trying to talk about today is innovation in the online space. What kinds of different models are out there, either organizational models or pedagogical models or business models about how to do online. Perhaps to kick it off, one of the things I can do is run through some of the sort of different models that I've seen out there, apart from just your basic
00:17:36
Speaker
you know, teaching people online in a regular sort of a way. So the one thing is the Minerva model, you know, which is partly online, partly not online, but it's a pretty cool model where they really rethought the curriculum and reorganized it in some different kinds of ways and have students move around to different places while learning online in this sort of rejiggered, very engaging sort of way. They've created their own
00:18:05
Speaker
web conferencing platform that sort of predated some of the features you see in products like class and that sort of thing that really helped people to engage more. So there's Minerva's one. It's a simple one, but I think just the inclusion more consciously of synchronous learning. So we saw that through to you and some other places. So actually having an in-person or not an in-person, a synchronous meeting for students to participate as a regular part of the course.
00:18:36
Speaker
A third sort of different model is the Wissing-Governor's model, so a disaggregated model of organizing the course so that your teachers are broken up into people who design the course, people who teach the course, people who grade the course, and so on. So you've got a slightly disaggregated model.
00:18:57
Speaker
A fourth different thing I see to an extent are earned admission models. So I primarily associated this with the University of Colorado and some of their massive online degrees, where even if you can't get into a course right away or a program right away, you can take some courses. And if you pass those, you get earned admission.
00:19:18
Speaker
And in fact, that brings up the, you know, the, the fifth model, which is sort of the massive online programs as degree programs. So particularly associated with Georgia Tech and their online masters of computer science. So very big classes, a much lower price point. Um, and then maybe the monthly fee, you know, uh, Neil was dissing some of the big corporate's forays into online, but you know, Google has done the monthly fee model or Coursera has done the monthly fee model quite well.
00:19:48
Speaker
in terms of getting these certificates. So those are some of those that I see and I'll hold my fire of criticism until you guys talk about what you're seeing in the space. Have I left things out? Yeah, I think that's a good sweep of kind of some of the things that are happening. I think one of the
00:20:08
Speaker
One of the aspects for me, and this has kind of come up recently because there's been a suite of programs that have been launched by a university over here, is the kind of on-demand degree. So, you know, the OPM partnerships has often yielded degrees with, you know, a much larger number of entry points, sort of five to six, whereas, you know, the standard in the UK is either one or two for entry points in the year to programs for postgraduate degrees and postgraduate degrees online.
00:20:37
Speaker
just starting to see on-demand degrees, which I think is a really interesting innovation. And it's not widespread, but there's a couple of examples now in the UK of that happening. But I think a lot of what you said kind of resonates with me. I mean, I think
00:20:55
Speaker
the route into online degrees and the way that that's done is an interesting one. You know, we mentioned, I think, kind of performance-based admissions. We've seen in terms of Coursera's strategy around kind of pathway degrees and the way in which their kind of funnel supports that kind of route through. I mean, another interesting thing that I've seen over here
00:21:17
Speaker
is a private provider who offers two years of an online undergraduate degree and then has an agreement with a university which enables the student who've done the two years online to go and do the third year on campus. So that's an interesting route into a degree, although you're kind of doing two-thirds of it before you go on campus. So yeah, there's a bunch of different things, but I think that was a good sweep, I think.
00:21:47
Speaker
And it's interesting that last one you mentioned, Neil, because the University of Florida Online, and I initially criticized this move, they had a PACE program. And the idea is exactly what you said. You qualify academically for University of Florida, but you can't get in for space constraints. But you can take an online program for the first two years, I think it was, and then be able to move to an on-campus environment.
00:22:16
Speaker
And initially, I was skeptical because it felt like it was just trying to desperately boost the numbers to make UF online seem more successful. But over time, I see the value
Challenges and Regulatory Adaptation in Education
00:22:26
Speaker
of it. Now, I think that they did a good job there and it's very much aligned with what you said. Although in the US, we have to go with four years instead of three. And two plus two sounds better than two plus one. Yeah. Sure. I also want to defend myself on the subscription side of things because I think
00:22:45
Speaker
I think that is an interesting model and it's something that occupies my thoughts a lot in terms of higher education. And I think one of the challenges over here around, you know, something that was approaching a kind of a subscription type module would be just all of the regulatory apparatus around it that, you know, we can talk about product innovation around kind of degrees and different courses and we can talk about disaggregation and micro credentials.
00:23:13
Speaker
But we really need the regulator and a number of different aspects of the kind of apparatus to kind of come along with us with that. If we're talking about that, we need kind of all of those structures to kind of come along too. And I think the subscription model is one that I...
00:23:33
Speaker
think about in relation to institutions like the Open University, you know, really radical institution in its time, has a lot of online students but seems to have challenges around getting those students from kind of the start to the end and you just wonder when you're thinking about equivalents of
00:23:51
Speaker
innovative institutions offering online education, whether a model like that is an innovative shift for now, whereas what they were doing back in the day was kind of innovative. So I'll try to add one. For now, we'll defer the conversation that I think all but one of the examples that have been mentioned so far were really created at least 10 to 15 years ago.
00:24:21
Speaker
which raises its own questions. One that we've done a little bit more recently is one I'm deeply involved in from a consulting standpoint. And Kevin Kelly who works with us is much more deeply involved. And that's the Colorado Community College system online. Now they've been doing online for 25 plus years. And what they do is you can do, they have 13 community college campuses.
00:24:46
Speaker
And you can do online at a campus, but then they created a central unit that does online courses that are shared across the system. And they got up to tens of thousands of students. Well, the accreditor essentially told them, you can't do that anymore. It looks like you're a non-accredited institution doing teaching, and that's not allowed. And it feels too much like an OPM.
00:25:12
Speaker
So they were forced to change models. So what we're helping them out with. And by the way, typically we don't talk about consulting clients. In this case, we have their permission to start talking about the work.
00:25:24
Speaker
But what they've had to go to is a course sharing consortium is what they're doing at this point. So all courses are taught by the individual institutions, but the online courses are available to students at any of the other campuses. So you have a home college teaching college model across the system, and it's being set up in a way to encourage
00:25:48
Speaker
colleges to teach, that there's a financial reward if you teach these colleges. So if you're a rural college, you might not have enough students fill out a program. So it's great to be able to still offer that, but pull in students from the rest of the state to fill out your courses and make it financially viable. And so that model and the potential to sort of
00:26:13
Speaker
avoid the situation of the rich getting richer or the big colleges doing all the work, but to actually incentivize all colleges within a system to collaborate, if you will, and do it on a core sharing. I consider that a fascinating new model. Now, it's been forced upon them as opposed to being voluntary, but based on what they're doing, it is a new model
00:26:38
Speaker
It goes far beyond what schools are using, like with Acadium and some of the corporate-based approaches. And it's also being done when they already have tens of thousands of students. It raises this whole question, we're not starting something new and seeing what happens. We have to take over this existing operation without screwing it up. So I would throw that model in there too as a newer one and potentially the newest one that we've mentioned.
00:27:07
Speaker
I would counter that argument. I think it's a new model, but it has some really old roots. Just going back to 1997 or so, and I haven't seen examples of this recently, but 1997 when I was in graduate school, my graduate program was involved in a compressed video course sharing thing where the course was offered at Minnesota, but you got to take courses from Stanford and Wisconsin as well.
00:27:37
Speaker
And in graduate school, who you take the course with is massive. So we could take courses with Charles Franklin at Wisconsin, who was the guy in the world at political polling. And that was amazing, and so on. So I think it has some old roots, but- No, you're definitely right about that. It definitely has some old roots. I think what's new is sort of the scale, the fact that it's with a large statewide
00:28:03
Speaker
effort that already has so many students. But you're right, it's not like they came up with the idea. But I think it's interesting to your point Morgan around the ability to take courses from other institutions. I think that that's an underexplored area.
00:28:18
Speaker
in terms of online education. I worked with one small provider in the UK where they'd done that. They had a virtual kind of online electives from different institutions, which is a really nice offer. But across the piece, I think that's kind of underdeveloped really, but an interesting aspect of the value proposition, I think, for online.
Barriers to Innovation in Higher Education
00:28:42
Speaker
I think we've covered a lot of ground here in terms of what's new and what's innovative. But something that strikes me is that, one, as feels right, mostly they're pretty old. And two, they're change at the margins. They're little tweaks often. I mean, you could argue about with some governors or something like that, but they're often little tweaks. So how come we aren't seeing more change and more innovation? Financial aid and regulations.
00:29:06
Speaker
just makes it nearly impossible to, not impossible, it makes it impossible to do structural change without relying on a decade plus timeframe. So I would say those are the two factors that force innovation to start at the margins and hopefully eat their way into the core is one way I would initially answer that question.
00:29:34
Speaker
I would add to that. I think there's an element of this that relates to where people are starting from. So although I wouldn't necessarily frame it as innovation, there are universities here who are just starting to offer online education. And for them, that might be perceived as a more radical step. And so the idea that you might
00:30:01
Speaker
do any of the kind of things that we've mentioned so far. Even the idea of going back to what I said around the entry points, even the idea of having two entry points in a year for postgraduate degrees is a challenge for some. So there's something about
00:30:19
Speaker
innovation outliers perhaps giving us a different sense of kind of what the landscape is like overall and people are being at different positions, I suppose. I think another aspect of that, I think we talked about this when we talked a little bit around the kind of precarious position of some universities. I think there's almost a culture that for whatever reason doesn't think beyond
00:30:42
Speaker
the kinds of educational offerings that have always been done. So we kind of talk about this in relation to kind of enrollments. And so, you know, if universities are looking for more students, they're not seeking more students through new innovative offerings and way of delivering things. They're looking at ways of doing that by playing in existing markets that they might not have played in before, transnational education online.
00:31:05
Speaker
So there's something about the culture that leads people to kind of existing pathways that they may not be familiar with rather than let's do something new and different, I think. So there's kind of other factors, I think, that play into that mix. And shouldn't we be clear, or maybe it's unstated, but we're talking about it. It's good and bad.
00:31:25
Speaker
both of them, that it's so hard to innovate in education. It's not like, oh, we should be doing everything faster. Otherwise, we'd all be applying to Udacity as our university.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm going to throw out a question, Morgan. Sorry, I'm still your funder. But I'm just interested as well, the extent to which we think, actually, are the innovations that we've seen, to what extent are they driven from within the university or from outside the university? Because certain innovations that I've kind of pointed to and that I'm aware of
00:32:03
Speaker
are driven by universities, but there's quite a lot of innovations I think that seem to be driven by outside actors that universities kind of adopt rather than coming from them themselves. And I just wonder what you felt about the kind of balance of where innovation comes from in higher education.
00:32:22
Speaker
I think they come from both. On the subject, there's actually a fascinating series of articles about the University of Colorado and the way that they were trying to offer their big online degrees through Coursera. And they're being very polite, but between the right lines, you sort of get a sense that they're really butting heads with Coursera about because they want to do something different. And Coursera has a product.
00:32:49
Speaker
and they want to offer that product in a new institution. So you've got an interesting sort of set of tensions there. On a slightly more dramatic way, I had some conversations with the institution a few years back, also working with an OPM, where
00:33:07
Speaker
The OPM was having multiple start dates and discounts and they would have a difficulty dealing with that actually with technology infrastructure. And so that's something coming from outside. But I'm interested to hear Phil's answer to this and then I've got a different thing I want to cover that sort of takes off on yours.
00:33:30
Speaker
Well, this is, I'm trying to think of how this gets categorized as an answer, but it's sort of a both. But part of the way to look at it is I think a lot of these ideas come from outside of the institution, but eventually they can come from inside. So Morgan mentioned the integration of synchronous with asynchronous. Far too long we've looked at this as either or.
00:33:55
Speaker
And I think that a lot of instructional designers got too locked into asynchronous as a way to do online, period. And whenever you talk synchronous, they would say, oh, you mean lecturing, and that's the only way to do it.
00:34:10
Speaker
If you look at 2U, and you mentioned that, they certainly did lecture synchronous, but they very carefully designed both synchronous and asynchronous activities into their pedagogy. So that's an outside actor that really introduced it in there. Well, now that we're out of the pandemic, there are a lot of schools that on their own are coming to similar conclusions. Hey, we can inject synchronous activities. It doesn't have to be a lecture to improve things.
00:34:39
Speaker
Now, I don't know if they were inspired by 2U or subconsciously aware of other people doing it, but that's an example where I think both ideas happen. And typically the earliest introduction of an idea is from outside the academy.
00:34:56
Speaker
but eventually it might come from inside the Academy. So that's sort of the template that I seem to see most often. And actually that makes me think of another thing that we haven't so spoken of, but that's the introduction of some in-person activities as part of an online program. Particularly with for-profits, but also Arizona State I think is doing it. And so we sort of seeing a bit of that
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's lots of interesting scope there around what's sometimes described this. I've seen kind of low residency programs. I've seen summer's only programs in terms of in-person attendance. But even other flavors of kind of in-person experience, I know one university that offers online degrees and actually arranges kind of meetups
00:35:51
Speaker
with students in, not in the UK often, but in different parts of the world that are kind of, you know, they might be...
00:36:00
Speaker
think that their degrees are kind of more on the art side of things so they might be kind of an arts or a heritage kind of visit somewhere and it's an opportunity for people to get together. I know when I worked on MBAs in the past they also have had points in which online MBAs where people meet up for a week or two so I think there's lots of scope for doing things around the fringes around that kind of thing and I'm not sure
00:36:24
Speaker
how much the asynchronous-synchronous divide is the case over here. I feel like that's a bit stronger in the US. I think you tend to see a bit more synchronous over here than the impression I'm getting from you guys. But I think in respect to getting people together or offering some kind of in-person flavor, I think there's lots of opportunities and scope around that kind of thing.
00:36:53
Speaker
But I do think in the online space, as in many spaces, we see a lot of mimetic isomorphism. So people just doing the same sort of thing as what they see other people doing.
Virtual Reality and Pedagogical Design
00:37:05
Speaker
A fancy name for it. But I think there's a lot of copying, essentially. And I think that really causes a lot of
00:37:16
Speaker
interesting tension in the online space because everybody's going after the same kind of students in the same kind of way. And it can be a crazy kind of world. Phil's giving me a skeptical look.
00:37:28
Speaker
Well, not on you, it's skeptical. You had mentioned recently another school that sort of chose instead of working with Arizona State's virtual reality program that they did with Dreamscape, which when I looked at that, that was deeply pedagogically driven. And it happened to have VR is a thing that enabled it. And then other schools saying we can do our own or even we can license ASU's technology.
00:37:57
Speaker
And it's a poor version of duplicating them. They forget or they don't go for the deeper pedagogical design and just go for the technology and the VR aspect. I know that's not that example is not purely online, but that's part of what I see as well as people choose to copy the easiest technology based parts of a program, not the harder student support pedagogy type of issues.
00:38:26
Speaker
No, definitely. I think we see a lot of that. I think there's a bit of a culture thing there. There's still a sense over here, I think, that of an uncomfortableness around competition with institutions. And I wonder whether that drives following the same path sometimes. And I think there's also maybe a fear or a lack of a regulatory environment that
00:38:53
Speaker
stimulates innovation as well. So I think there's a bunch of cultural factors in higher education that kind of constrain people either literally or kind of just mentally in terms of and kind of visiting what might be possible. And you see that even in the level of courses where you'll often have
00:39:12
Speaker
you know course teams saying oh well we can't innovate in this way around assessment because you know it's not going to meet university kind of regulations and actually the you know the people in the quality teams will say actually no you can do that so there is sometimes that aspect of it as well at the kind of individual level of a course but also kind of at the wider level of the kind of sector I think.
Regulatory Challenges and Innovation
00:39:35
Speaker
For the record, Neil's the one who brought up regulations to this depth, not me. But since you have, I think this is a topic we need to get out here, particularly in the U.S. Part of what we're dealing with and part of the reason that so many of these examples happened at 10 to 15 years ago is a complete change in the presidential administration approach to innovation.
00:40:00
Speaker
And back during the Obama administration, there was definitely a consumer protection mindset of let's protect students, find the bad guys, and shut them down. But it was balanced with we need to innovate. And so one of the biggest examples was competency-based education.
00:40:18
Speaker
and they had a program where they explicitly said, we know a lot of schools are interested in CBE, so we're going to relax some of our requirements, because we realize they were written for a different age, to enable schools to do a large pilot program. I think there were hundreds of schools involved. And we're going to encourage you to innovate around CBE to see where it goes. That's what it used to be.
00:40:44
Speaker
Today, it's 100% on the consumer protection catch the bad guys mentality. And virtually everything we see out of the current regulatory environment makes innovating dangerous to do. And I think that's a huge factor over here. And part of the reason so many of our examples come from the early 2010s.
00:41:09
Speaker
And there's such an establishment of a glorified vision of the past where everybody was in an amazing classroom with an amazing instructor and absolutely learning 100%. That's their vision that they base everything off and everything online is bogus. And I worry about the regulations around generative AI.
00:41:36
Speaker
having a similar effect. I'm certainly not a believer that AI solves everything or it's a silver bullet, but I think we're just starting out with the you've got to be careful. Watch out, you know, like start thinking about what could go wrong before you've even figured out what could go right.
Minerva's Model and ROI in Education
00:41:55
Speaker
I wonder as well, you know, you saying, Phil, about this kind of change in the
00:41:59
Speaker
the administration's kind of view of higher education. I think that's influenced regulation over here, but in a slightly different way in terms of closer scrutiny that universities are kind of delivering on their kind of value proposition of, you know, getting people through and getting them into good paying jobs. And that has stifled the ability
00:42:20
Speaker
in in some ways to innovate and you mentioned competency-based education that would be I know if one university over here who's who's adopted that for some of their online offerings but would be a very hard thing to adopt in in the kind of current regulatory environment over here and that's driven by you know the particular wind that's blowing in in politics I guess around higher education too
00:42:45
Speaker
Well, go back to, I think, Morgan, your first example was on Minerva education. The real benefit of Minerva, from my viewpoint, was it was the classical view of education to produce educated citizens who have critical thinking skills and have a rich experience. And their model is really based on how can we innovate to enable that? Well, in today's environment,
00:43:12
Speaker
It's all about return on investment and payoff. And did you get a job that pays off your student loan debt? In this environment, I think it'd be pretty difficult to do a Minerva because it's not tied explicitly to return on investment. So I think you're right that that's another way to look at where it's more difficult to do innovation is we're too focused right now on return on investment.
00:43:39
Speaker
And I know we're talking about some of the complaints, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. We don't want to squouch it. Absolutely. I think as we go forward, we're going to need more innovation in a way to get over some of those things because to get a better return on investment, because it is important and to get more people through and to address those retention issues. The current way isn't going to do it.
00:44:07
Speaker
And so we need different ways of seeing things. It's all stated positively. We showed, you know, if you look at the Trump administration, most of that was removing regulations, some of which you could view was opened up innovation. But I really look back to the Obama administration where they explicitly encouraged innovation.
00:44:31
Speaker
In other words, it is possible to change this environment and support innovation more, but without saying we're doing no oversight at all. And you're absolutely right. We need more of that right now, particularly given the enrollment and the financial challenges that schools face.
Conclusion and Future Topics
00:44:49
Speaker
Well, this has been a great conversation, and it's interesting hearing that sweep of different programs. I came in this morning saying, oh, we're really going to struggle to find some positive new program things. And it was a struggle to find recent ones, but there are a lot of good program innovations out there, and we're going to need more of them moving forward.
00:45:12
Speaker
So with that, look forward to talking to you guys next week, although it is going to be on an explicitly dangerous topic about governance and what's happening with franchise providers and nonprofit conversions. But look forward to our conversation next week.