It’s Saturday, April 19th. It’s a beautiful Spring day — probably the first day we’ll hit 70 degrees here in central PA — and hundreds of Penn State professionals are devoting the day to the “Teaching and Learning Symposium.” That makes me proud of Penn State.
David Wiley (expert on Learning Objects from BYU, and all around great guy) gave an eyeopening keynote where has proposed that education’s monopoly is in jeopardy, predicted “disaggregation” in higher education, and asked us to do the right thing, for the right reasons (not out of fear, but because of our “sacred trust” to serve students well). He also provided good examples of how he has opened content and access to his classes and encouraged us to innovate. (See this article about his exploits: When Professors Print Their Own Diplomas, Who Needs Universities?)
His thoughts about disaggregation included references to content provided by hundreds of universities for over 6,000 courses (see the MIT Open Courseware Project for example) and separate assessment services like those provided by the Western Governors’ University. He proposed that if we don’t use open options better, our students may leave us for other options.
That got me thinking (again) about how, now that access to content is no longer the problem, Penn State might want to get better at providing learning communities around course topics and might want to dust off and seriously expand its policies on “Credit by Examination” and “Credit by Portfolio Assessment.”
Can we stop seeing our primary job as content distribution, and understand that our job is supporting students as they master content and develop higher order skills? Can we change our policies and practices to make that happen? If we can, we will be doing as David Wiley asks — making important changes, not out of fear, but to attain our mission of helping students learn.
If you want to help make this happen, talk to me.