CETIS 2006 Future of education institutions

Back to Previous Enterprise SIG Meetings: Enterprise Sessions at the JISC CETIS Conference - 2004-2006.

The Pre-Conference Session Plan
This one day session (Day Two) will focus on future trends in educational institutions. Session attendees will be invited to join in a general discussion, and identify key areas and trends in order to inform future development.

The broad topics for discussion will include:
 * 1) Wider global and societal trends affecting future educational institutions.
 * 2) Existing and emerging technologies likely to have increased use and impact in future institutions.
 * 3) Imagining the future: possible innovations not yet dreamt or discovered which could impact on education. (N.B. We did not really end up discussing topic 3).
 * 4) Will educational “institutions” as distinct, concrete physical entities still exist in the future? What form will future institutions take?
 * 5) The human angle, what will the educational experience be for learners, academic and admin staff in the future?
 * 6) A formal or an informal future for educational institutions, what do we think is most likely?

Photos on Flickr of the flipchart sheet notes taken by Scott during the discussion
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/cetis2006conferenceinstitutions/ Photos on Flickr of our flipchart

Conference Report: Introduction to the Session
Vashti introduced the session suggesting that the group focus on a fairly specific future date, rather than just a nebulous distant future, and suggested 2012, 6 years ahead. We gave session attendees handouts with space to write down their thoughts about the 6 areas for discussion, with images beside each topic to stimulate thought and ideas! The 6 topics had been chosen to try and bring some focus and cohesion to a very broad topic area. We asked people to consider not just what they thought the future of educational institutions was likely to be, but what they would actually like it to be. We had a quiet 10 minutes whilst delegates made notes, and thought about the topic.

Conference Report: Topic 1: Wider global and societal trends affecting future educational institutions
The image beside this topic was a round grass covered "hobbit" style home, captioned "Climate change: sustainable building". We suggested that climate change was likely to be one of the major global issues likely to impact on the future of educational institutions. A delegate from Manchester mentioned that their institution was already focusing on sustainable building.

A delegate suggested that the single most important issue facing institutions in regards to climate change is energy use. The rising cost of energy and access to energy supplies would be a problem for education. People agreed that their institutions were already beginning to look into ways of tackling energy issues. Delegates also identified power as an issue, i.e. the cost of power and the ability to supply it, and suggested that a move towards virtual servers might be on its way.

It was suggested that one merit of online learning for overused resources is that it can decrease the need to use paper, but a delegate pointed out that using computers and the internet actually tends to increase the amount of paper used and printed by learners and tutors. Future policies are likely to increase printing costs, and encourage people to do less printing and more recycling. A future-savvy delegate also informed us that you could now get plastic paper with inbuilt wireless connections, and that paper could disappear in the near future.

Other issues identified by delegates as impacting on their institutional policies included access to water, growing populations, and pandemics, such as bird flu. One delegate mentioned that his institution's Disaster Planning focused first and foremost on issues rising from a possible bird flu pandemic. Other general issues identified included the War on Terror, globalization and its impact on the cultural diversity of institutions, the increasing size of institutions, and the rise of an elderly population in the UK.

One delegate raised another issue likely to affect future education, which was copyright, and the possibility that it may be extended to 75 or 100 years in the UK, thereby disenabling people's access to learning resources.

We spent some time discussing the socialization aspect of education, and the fact that many students want to actually attend campuses and interact with other people, rather than just learn virtually. A delegate said that in their experience, students wanted e-support, rather than e-learning [which ties in well with the focus on e-Admin in current JISC calls for projects].

In a connected point, it was mentioned that the core business of institutions was also about introducing people to professional networks, and future employment opportunities, both via these networks, and also as a result of extra curricular activities undertaken at HE and FE, such as participating in student radio or student politics. We agreed that attending institutions physically rather than virtually played an important role in boradening people's horizons. In response to this, a delegate reminded us that virtual education was extremely important and useful for poor countires.

Delegates raised the issue of individualization of learning, and the increasing diversity and range of institutions available to learners. [On the flip side of this, we later discussed the problem that e-learning can sometimes lead to a homogenisation of courses across institutions].

Delegates mentioned some other facts changing the nature of institutions, such as the fact that many students are now studying part time alongside other commitments, and of course, that students are having to pay fees.

In conclusion, someone (I think it was Scott) suggested that educational institutions are "communities of radical people who behave in conservative ways".

Conference Report: Topic 2: Existing and emerging technologies likely to have increased use and impact in future institutions
We asked the delegates to suggest existing technologies which they thought were likely to become more widely used in educational institutions.

The suggestions included:
 * Lots more gadgets!
 * Spimes.
 * Advanced display technologies.
 * Sophisticated plagiarism detection systems.
 * Forum technologies.
 * Time shifted lectures (podcasts, video streaming, etc).
 * Increased bandwidth.
 * Improved video conferencing.
 * Gesture and speech technologies.
 * Mobile phones.
 * Audio culture.
 * Speech recognition.
 * Games and virtual learning (although one delegate disagreed that this would become more widely used).
 * Assessment technology.
 * Surveillance (one delegate suggested institutions might need to provide less technology, due to the need to comply with legal issues about logging people's activities, which could be compromised by increased use of surveillance technology).
 * Integrated admissions and enrolments services (as Enterprise SIG Coordinator I hope for that one!).
 * Seamless interoperability.

The discussion continued from here. A delegate suggested that the technology was not as important as having skilled teachers, and someone pointed out that technology enabled access to people. We discussed the timing of learning and how some 13 to 18 year olds are not partivularly interested in education at that time of their lives, whereas some people are more interested in their 20s. We moved to a teabreak, and continued the discussion after tea.

Conference Report: Topic 5: The human angle: what will the educational experience be for learners, academic and admin staff in the future?
We discussed the changes in authority now that students pay for education and are more like customers, and also the issue of some learners being more knowledgeable than the teachers, with the growth in mature students.

It was mooted that technology can scale up reputation, with teachers gaining repute and notoriety online.

We also agreed that technology and e-learning can expose good and bad teaching, and create a trail of people's abilities and expertise, and hence some staff hate it! Students now go online and discuss bad teachers, whose practices would have possibly gone unnoticed in previous times. Hence quality, which is currently peer reviewed, could become student centered. At this point, someone pointed out that we need to ask what quality as seen by the student is? The point of education, after all, is to push students beyond their comfort zone, not give them an easy time!

We also agreed that increased continuous assessment is affecting the student experience.

Conference Report: Topic 4: Will educational “institutions” as distinct, concrete physical entities still exist in the future? What form will future institutions take?
We tackled topic 4 after topic 5. Delegates suggested that the role of institutions was to be brands associated with specific qualities and attributes, stamped on your CV. Teaching and assesment need to be linked under an institutional umbrella for the brand to have meaning and quality.

We discussed whether institutions could just provide certifications of people's knowledge, but this would only confirm people's abilities and achievements, not their future potential or ability to think. I.e. at present institutions do not just look at a candidate's past record of achievement, but their potential, which is crucial as many candidates come from poor backgrounds or had less access to learning resources than others, and marks of achievement do not necessarily always reflect individual's potential. In addition, attending educational institutions does not just test learner's achievements, but their ability to cope with stress, deadlines and so forth.

We discussed possibilities created by virtual access to education, such as enabling students to study for specialised diplomas across different subject areas and institutions, and the ability to cater for virtual minority language communities.

Someone mentioned that in Japan, universities have spaces in shopping centres, right in the community. Wifi access has the potential to enable more creative ways of participating in learning, such as enabling students to study from the beach, as one delegate suggested. We discussed whether it would be possible to be an "informal scholar". It was also mentioned that virtual education enables people to study a wide range of course without having to move into the cities, enabling them to have a good quality of life in the country. Just as people discuss a work / life balance, perhaps it is possible to develop a good study / life balance...Many people want flexible home working and learning opportunities.

We discussed the practicalities of working and studying from home, and how features such as Skype enable people to be in contact with other colleagues or students (and show that they are working!). We agreed that features such as Skype and other instant messengers had resulted in people simultaneously writing two emails, doing their work, and conducting several instant message conversations. This is known as "continual partial attention", and more research needs to be done into the value (or lack of value) of holding these multiple conversations.

We also pondered the potential of offering lifelong learning to institutional alumni, once attached to that "brand", why not enable them to continue having access to learning. This brought us back to the issue of informal learners, with someone pointing out this was only possible if people could pay for access to learning. It was suggested that people could pay membership fees - much like in a club - rather than paying for specific courses, and have access to lots of different courses. However, this would affect the entire selection process, which currently assesses people's aptitude for a specific course.

Finally, we engaged with the issues of homogenization and standardization, and the dangers that virtualization of learning could lead to too much standardization.

Conference Report: A Question: What would you like education to be like in 6 years time?
Rather than asking people what they thought the future would be, we asked what they would like it to be. We asked the delegates present to imagine that we all had 12 year old children, who would be going into further or higher education in 6 years time, and asked what delegates hoped for from future education.

The replies were:
 * A good Student's Union (to develop active citizens) and sustainable planning.
 * A big choice and range of courses.
 * The imaginary future children to delay studying until a later age. (This sparked a few responses, with others agreeing 18 was not the optimum age to pursue further studies).
 * The imaginary future children to make focused choices rather than drift into choices.
 * Support for part-time students, as most will only be able to study part-time.
 * A course structure which enables students to study a wide variety of things before choosing what to focus on.
 * A reconsideration of whether 3-4 years is the best length of time for degrees.

Conference Report: Topic 6: A formal or an informal future for educational institutions: what do we think is most likely?
It was suggested that staff need to focus on bridging the formal and informal, and that learning needs to be more scholar focused rather than institution focused. People discussed the values of coupling learning with apprenticeships at workplaces. Some people wanted more emphasis on employability. Others mentioned that learning was not just about getting jobs.

We needed to plan our sentence or image for the plenary, so someone suggested Keep it Weird, which was written above a picture of a crossed out hamburger, labelled McDegree. This represented our fears that virtualization would lead to too much standardization in education, and our belief in the need to keep things informal, unique and diverse.

Links
Conferences


 * Beyond Distance Conference 2007: Learning Futures, 9th-10th January 2007: http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/conference2007.html

Blog Posts


 * Web 2.0 and Future Education: http://t42distanceeducation.blogspot.com/2005/12/14-web-20-and-future-education_08.html


 * Educational Mashups ("It’s all about students taking the lead and designing their own education instead of just recieving what a central administrator hands them. This is the education of the future."): http://awilum.com/?p=143

Articles


 * The university where everyone's a stranger ("This month will see a new kind of graduate emerge from the realms of cyberspace: the first UK graduates to have been tutored purely online"), Stephen Hoare, The Guardian, June 20th 2006: http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1801297,00.html


 * Back to school with the class of Web 2.0: http://www.solutionwatch.com/512/back-to-school-with-the-class-of-web-20-part-1/ and http://www.solutionwatch.com/515/back-to-school-with-the-class-of-web-20-part-2/ and http://www.solutionwatch.com/519/back-to-school-with-the-class-of-web-20-part-3/

Websites


 * School 2.0: http://www.school2-0.org/

Fun


 * Children's thoughts on future education ("I believe that we will have virtual reality, in which we can look at the details of wars or other important events, for history" and "There might be alien life forms in the schools".): http://www.schoolnetglobal.com/introduction/ef.html

Contact
Please send any comments or links to vashtizarach@yahoo.co.uk