I’ve been attending Educause regularly for more than twenty years, and I can remember the excitement that was generated by the merger of two organizations, CAUSE (largely focused on business and administrative applications) and EDUCOM (largely focused on teaching and learning). This year’s conference fulfilled the hopes of the merger, I think, because there were many sessions available in a multitude of tracks. Sometimes there were so many concurrent sessions in a track that it was difficult to choose.
Luckily, almost all of the conference presentations will soon be available online – the big exception being the first-rate presentation by Jim Collins. I have read all of his books, and so his presentation didn’t have much new content. He is, however, a first-rate speaker, and it was fun to watch him in action. His talk was a paean to leadership. He spent much of his time on the trajectory of failure – what causes organizations to peak and then perish? He has lots of data on business failures, and I struggled to find ways to apply his lessons to higher education (yes, we are an industry made up of 3,500 independent companies in the US). He did a brief paper on non-profits a few years ago, and I would like for him to do a close study of a small number of institutions – even colleges or departments – that are at crossroads. Leadership matters there, too – big time.
I bought the DVD of Larry Lessig’s talk. For those who saw him at the TLT Symposium last year, much of the material and his style are familiar, but it was helpful to get his take on the Google Book project. I was particularly interested in the Science Commons and the morass of challenges for people who want to re-use materials in documentaries. His dark ruminations about current thinking in government about copy-wrongs were not comforting. We will find a way to show his talk later this month for those who want to discuss copyright challenges in higher ed. Details are TBA.
I spent a great deal of time in meetings with CIC colleagues, vendors (Blackboard, Adobe), and would-be vendors (Google). For the second year in a row, one of PSU’s major vendors, Apple, was not at EDUCAUSE. I think that it is very poor corporate stewardship for Apple not to support this conference – and to participate in it. I was very impressed by some of the new products under development. Of course, I missed ANGEL’s booth and the good folks who led that company so well.
What would I like to see in Educause 2010? Four topics were painfully absent this year and need to be addressed.
1. Engagement with K-12. What happens in K-12 affects higher ed. Why were there no themes about how we can work more successfully together?
2. Engagement with higher ed internationally. How are other nations addressing issues that we are facing? Many countries are ahead of the US in identity and access management. Why aren’t we talking with them? Many countries are mounting huge programs in distance education – what can we learn from them and contribute to them?
3. Engagement with the federal government and with accreditation bodies. The Spellings Commission may be out of business, but the accreditation bodies are not. They will have an increasing impact on our practices, esp. in learning outcomes. The Higher Ed reauthorization act has lots of new requirements, so how about a discussion of their impacts? Ditto for new policies dealing with peer-to-peer, copyright, and net neutrality.
4. Engagement with NCAT and Foundations that are shaping new practices in higher education. In my session on course redesign, no more than 10% of the 80 attendees were aware of the work of Carol Twigg’s National Center for Academic Transformation (http://www.thencat.org). For more than 10 years this group has produced evidence about how to increase learning and reduce costs. Why is NCAT not on this program? Ditto for foundations that have bankrolled many grants. Where are the lessons learned? And what are likely to be the funding priorities for Hewlett, Mellon, Gates, NEH, NSF, etc. I have attached a copy of my presentation on course redesign. May not year’s conference have 25!
Course Redesign (EDUCAUSE 2009).pdf