University Futures and
New Technologies: Possibilities and Issues
Daniel E. Atkins
The University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.
1
Background
This is an invited paper intended to be a starting point for
brainstorming, discussion, and scenario building at an invitational workshop of
experts to explore the push and pull of new technologies -- largely information
and communication technology (ICT) -- on learning, teaching and research in
higher education. The OECD Centre for Educational
Research and Innovation (CERI) convened this workshop as part of a project on university futures.
The project is international in focus and includes the entire post-secondary
sector, not only the research university. Technology is one strand of
reflection that will also include consideration of demography, massification,
the labor market, internationalization, globalization[1],
intellectual property rights, and status of the academic profession. Besides
the changes that technology can induce in learning, teaching and research in the
future, it will likely the impact the design of physical and virtual university
environments, as well as its relationships with intellectual property rights.
In this paper we briefly review some of the growing
literature on the topic of ICT and the future of higher education; propose a
framework for envisioning some of the possibilities (largely based on
initiatives in the sciences as harbingers of broader impact); and conclude with
strategic issues and questions for further deliberation. The paper is a work in
progress intended to be embellished and extended based upon dialog among
experts from diverse international perspectives.
There is going awareness and deliberations on the future of
higher education, particularly in the context of the information technology
revolution and the associated emergence of globally competitive,
knowledge-based economies. There is a contemporary literature building on this
topic including a series of reports from studies sponsored by the U.S. National
Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine [1-3], a website from a visioning
process sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation [4], the OECD Centre for
Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) [5, 6], and a set of provocative
books, for example [7-10]. A recent collection of
papers by American and European academic leaders under the title Reinventing
the Research University, edited by Weber
and Duderstadt [10] is particularly relevant to
this workshop because of its international orientation. In the U.S., veteran
university leaders Frank Rhodes [11] and more recently Charles
Vest [12] offer broad treatments of the
future of the university with some material relevant to the role of ICT.
While not primarily focused on the future of the university
in the context of ICT, Pelikan [13] is a refresher on the origins
and fundamental mission of the university. Reading it provokes the question of
whether the traditions of unity from diversity (uni-versity) or universality of
scholarly communities can be maintained in an explosive knowledge world without
adopting new forms and methods based on information technology. What does it
mean to call yourself a ÒuniversityÓ in a highly connected world enabled by
information technology? Susanne
LohmannÕs (lohmann@ucla.edu) pending
book, How Universities Think, [14] will be a must read for
higher education futurists. It provides a contemporary, systemic treatment of
this complex institution, and most relevant to this paper, it creates
substantial doubt that Peter DruckerÕs famous prediction that Òthirty years
from now the big university campuses will be relicsÓ will come true. More importantly, it also makes vivid
that while the following quote by Clark Kerr with respect to universities is true:
about 85 institutions in the Western World established by
1520 still exist in recognizable forms, with similar functions and with
unbroken histories, including the Catholic Church, the Parliaments of the Isle
of Man, of Iceland, and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and 70
universities;
that the longevity of the university is not a result of never changing – but rather a
credit to its ability to evolve, adapt, and change over time. The continuing
power and ubiquity of information and communication technology is now creating
another need and opportunity to do so.
Our approach is to develop frameworks, point of views and
terminology for this conversation; to suggest a set of generic possibilities
that could be building blocks for scenarios; and to illustrate some of these
possibilities through examples of initiatives underway. We are striving for a
treatment that is abstract and generic enough to apply to a broad notion of
higher education – not just the research university – but grounded
enough to evoke specific scenarios and courses of action. This version of the
paper is not balanced with respect to international initiatives – it will
be biased towards the work best known to the author in the U.S. But a goal of
the paper is to help remedy this deficiency by encouraging international
institutional cooperation on visioning, strategy development, and creating
ecologies of experimentation to better understand how to apply technology to
more broadly and deeply realize the fundamental mission of higher education.
2
Frameworks, Points of View, Terminology
2.1 ICT as a cross-cutting force
The knowledge economy is demanding new types of learners and
creators. Globalization requires thoughtful, interdependent and globally
identified citizens. New technologies are changing modes of learning,
collaboration and expression. And widespread social and political unrest
compels educational institutions to think more concertedly about their role in
promoting individual and civic development. Institutional and pedagogical
innovations are needed to confront these dynamics and insure that the canonical
activities of universities -- research, teaching and engagement -- remain rich,
relevant and accessible.
ICT is one force for change together with others including
demography, massification, the labor market, shifting public attitudes,
internationalization, intellectual property rights, the state of the academic
profession. ICT continues exponential grow in the capacity of computation,
storage, and communication technology combined with the (much slower) progress
in socio-technical understanding about how to apply these technologies to
knowledge-based activities. ICT is often treated independently as
one force co-linear with the others. This point of view limits the space of new
possibilities because it fails to appreciate that ICT is actually cross-cutting
with respect to the other forces and can be the basis for new organizational
forms and ways of learning, discovery and creation that affect all the others.
New technologies afford a suite of opportunities to meet the
challenge of the knowledge economy. ICT enables new communication structures
that radically reduce constraints of distance and time, and enable novel
environments for research, teaching and engagement. These new environments can
augment what universities have historically done well by offering new
possibilities for creating learning communities to build, explore and apply
knowledge in pioneering ways to meet changing societal needs and realities. As
noted by John Seely Brown, ÒItÕs probably less helpful to say simply that the
university will change because of changing technologies than to say the
emerging computational infrastructure will be crucially important in retooling
the already changing university and in providing access to these students of
tomorrow.Ó [15] Universities are changing in
part because of changes in societal needs, including increasing populations of
traditional and non-traditional students, need for new styles of pedagogy, and
economies that make educated people and ideas more important.Ó BrownÕs comment
also suggests that we not view the future of higher education as purely a
product of technological determinism.
ICT can enable
Òand-andÓ organizations as opposed to Òeither-or.Ó An ICT enabled organization can in
effect can be both big and small, local and global, centralized and
decentralized. A response to massification need not depend solely on more
bricks and mortar and traditional classrooms instruction. ICT-based solutions,
e-learning, are possible but should be comprehensive enough to avoid creating
second class, off-campus students without full access to the library,
laboratories, and informal serendipity learning opportunities with instructors
and peers.
2.2 Higher
education institutions as knowledge communities
The authorÕs point of view on the nature of Òuniversities in
the digital ageÓ has been strongly influenced by the essay of the same name by
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid [15]. They assert that the value
of a university lies in the complex relationship it creates between knowledge,
communities, and credentials. They
suggest, Òit is a mistake to think of the university "delivering"
knowledge or students as "receiving" it. Central to higher education
is the way universities provide access to communities of scholars and
testimony for a student's experience among these communities. Consequently, universities should explore resources
(most especially ICT) for bringing people together, not, as some
interpretations of "distance education" suggest, for reinforcing
their isolation.Ó Brown and Duguid assert
Òcommunities are at the heart of what universities doÉÓ
A
community view, they suggest,
allows a more rounded view of
what learning, all learning, is and how it happens. A delivery view assumes
that knowledge is made up of discrete, pre-formed units which learners ingest
in smaller or greater amounts and in specialized settings until graduation or
indigestion takes over. To become a physicist, such a view suggests, you need
to take in a lot of formulas and absorb a lot of experimental data. But, on the
one hand, knowledge is not a static, pre-formed substance; it's constantly
changing and learning involves active engagement in the processes of change.
And, on the other, people don't become physicists by learning formulas any more
than they become football players by learning plays. In learning how to be a
physicist or a football player-how to act as one, talk as one, be recognized as
one-it's not the explicit statements, but the implicit practices that count.
The central point is that
learning does not occur independent of communities and consequently, the
central thrust of any attempt to retool the education system must involve
expanding access to communities (of practice) not simply to credentials. ÒThe purpose of retooling must be
two-pronged-it must seek to provide wider access to communities, but it must
also expand ways to represent new forms of access in the markets where students
need exchange value.Ó (i.e. new forms of credentialing)
Universities are built around overlapping communities that create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge and practice (explicit and implicit knowledge). I will use the phrase Òknowledge communityÓ as shorthand for Òcommunities that create, disseminate, use and/or preserve knowledge and practice.Ó A university-based knowledge community does not necessarily mean a community of peers. It can include, as it usually does, members across a spectrum of expertise – Nobel Laureate to neophyte. People may also play different roles in different communities – teacher in one and learner in another.
The key point here is that any appropriate figure of merit
on the use of ICT in higher education has to have something to do with enabling
or enhancing members of communities of knowledge and practice to interact with
each other, and with the information and tools of their trade. And members and
institutional affiliation of these communities can be diverse: observer,
student, teacher, researcher, and practitioner.
2.3 ICT
as infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure)
The term ÒcyberinfrastructureÓ has recently come into use to
describe the combination of information and communication technology (ICT),
service organizations, human resources, and policy that under gird an
increasing range of knowledge-based activities in society. The term
infrastructure is a reminder that revolutionary, or even incrementally
effective application of ICT requires more understanding and effort to define,
build, and sustain a true infrastructure layer for ICT. Infrastructure is
itself a complex subject. By definition it includes facilities and services
that are largely taken for granted until they are missing, but it is often the
most complex and expensive undertaking of society. The prefix ÒcyberÓ denotes
the emphasis on ICT-based infrastructure, both hardware and software. It is
also a reminded that ICT-based infrastructure is different from bricks and
mortar ÒbuiltÓ infrastructure. On the negative side it depreciates more
rapidly; on the positive it offers new possibilities for sharing and reuse of
facilities and enables new distributed organizational forms.
Figure 1 illustrates functional capabilities of cyberinfrastructure as defined in a report released in February 2003 by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure [16]. The report develops a vision of a comprehensive, advanced IT-based infrastructure that is becoming a platform for new methods and organizations for scientific and engineering research and education. Terms such a collaboratory, grids, and e-science are used for these new organizations, many of which are virtual and geographically distributed. They potentially support participation anytime, anyplace, and by anyone. The report finds,
Éthat a new age has dawned in
scientific and engineering research, pushed by continuing progress in
computing, information and communication technology; and pulled by the
expanding complexity, scope, and scale of todayÕs problems.
Figure 1. Cyberinfrastructure
services.
The major components of cyberinfrastructure include:
1.
High performance, global scale networking as a hybrid of traditional packet switching and the
newer point-to-point optical ÒlambdaÓ networks.
2.
A special type of software called ÒmiddlewareÓ, that makes it much easier to build community
specific, inter-institutional virtual organizations in efficient, secure, and
trustful ways. In the education community the emphasis is on middleware based
on open standards and open source software. Important middleware initiatives
include [17, 18]
3.
High performance computation services capable of simulating complex phenomena such as
galaxy formation or social-physical models of global warming.
4.
Data, information, knowledge management services federating vast networks of digital libraries,
archives, and museums (LAMs) providing content and sustainable knowledge
management services. They include
comprehensive collections of literature, data sets, and a large variety of
multimedia objects. Preservation, interoperability and re-use of scientific
data is a high priority in many research communities and there is a growing
unmet need for people and institutions to provide long-term curation and
preservation.
5.
Observation, measurement and fabrication services including arrays of networked scientific instruments
and sensors to measure and observe our world and beyond.
6.
Interfaces and visualization services to support interaction between humans and the ICT
environments in ways that are natural and exploit the full range of human
sensory capabilities.
7. Collaboration service to enable distributed teams to work together as well or even better than they can in physical proximity;
Cyberinfrastructure initiatives by various names are now underway in most all
countries in the developed world. Examples include UK e-science [19], Canadian CANAIRE ÒThird
Wave,Ó European Union 6th Framework [20], South Africa CSIR [21], and the Japanese Earth
Simulator [22] (primarily a computation
initiative). The initial focus is on research and educations in science and
engineering but these fields are usually at the forefront in creating and
adopting ICT and thus the cyberinfrastructure movement is likely a harbinger of
much broader impact on research, learning and societal engagement. In the U.S.
the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has commissioned a panel to
study the impact of cyberinfrastructure on the humanities and the less quantitative
social sciences. The panelÕs report is due in early 2005 and is chaired by
Professor John Unsworth (unsworth@uiuc.edu)
at the University of Illinois. The recent survey of ÒcyberscienceÓ by Nentwich [23] complements the NSF
cyberinfrastructure report, but because it uses the broader notion of science
embodied in the German word wissenschaft,
it also complements the humanities study.
3
Some properties of cyberinfrastructure-enhanced knowledge
communities
Cyberinfrastructure is a layer of ICT-based services, institutions,
and human resources on which are built specific environments to support
knowledge communities for research and education. We use the phrase cyberinfrastructure-enhanced
knowledge communities (CKCs) as the generic
name for these environments. The specific terms collaboratories, e-science, and
grids are now used for CKCs and the science and engineering research
communities are now the pioneers in building and using them. But the
perspective of this paper is that these activities are the vanguard for broader
adoption of cyberinfrastructure in support of higher education. What are we
learning in the context of scientific research can help build vision and
scenarios of broader use. In this section we outline some of the general
properties and possibilities.
3.1 New
tools
Cyberinfrastructure provides new tools for exploration,
creativity, and inquiry-based learning. Examples include computational
simulation, composite instruments, data mining, virtual and augmented reality,
new document genres, and push and pull information sharing. These tools are
powerful when used alone but even more so, as we will discuss shortly, when
combined into functionally complete Òcollaboratories.Ó
Computational simulation
is now widely regarded as a third mode of science together with theory and
experimentation. It is the tool for modeling and understanding the formation of
the universe, global climate change, and predicting and protecting against
natural disasters. Observational platforms (e.g. telescopes, satellite-based
instruments, sensor arrays, ocean research ships) become new, more powerful composite
instruments when linked together over
networks. Data mining techniques
enable reuse of data sets to find information not expected when the data was
acquired. Virtual and
augmented reality offer immersive
interfaces between humans and computational systems. Virtual reality is a
product of total digital synthesis of sensory experiences and augmented reality
is a composite of the synthetic and observed world. The digital realm also
enables new genres of multimedia
documents blending text, image, audio, video, and computation applets. And
these documents can now be disseminated to the world at essential zero
incremental world and in a complex distribution environment of both push and
pull between producers and consumers.
3.2 Relaxed
constraints of time and distance
Figure 2 is a two-by-two matrix representing the four
possibilities for interaction in same and different, time and place. There are three types of interactions
denoted: people-to-people (P), people-to-information (I), and
people-to-facilities (F).
Facilities include instruments and machines for observation,
measurement, fabrication and robotic assembly. Although not explored here, it
is also possible for information and facilities to interact with each other
without human intervention.
Figure 2. Examples of human,
information facilities interaction over time and place.
The upper half of Figure 2 is the zone of interaction and collaboration for the traditional place-based educational institutions. Members of knowledge communities interact with each other, with print-on-paper objects and with facilities, all in physical proximity (upper left). The interaction can also be distributed over time by sequential use (time sharing) of a physical location, information objects, and facilities (upper right). Cyberinfrastructure can be used to augment same place interactions, but the greatest new potential comes from communication and storage capabilities that enable geographically distributed synchronous and asynchronous interaction. This is the Òanytime, anyplaceÓ attribute.
The examples in the lower left are self-explanatory. In the lower right quadrant ÒknowbotsÓ is a popular phase for software intelligent agents that locate, summarize, and notify their human customers of information they have been trained to recognize as relevant to them. Similarly there are autonomous scientific observational platforms. ÒSession objectsÓ refer to digital streams archived for replay and reuse as science teams conduct scientific experiments. Peers and students can visit the session later to review, learn, comment, and annotate.
The Òany time and any placeÓ attribute creates a basis for participation by anyone. This enables broaden participation by other than the usual members of a university community. Government officials in a developing country could both learn and make unique contributions to a graduate seminar on the topic of ICT and globalization. Mechanical engineering faculty, students, and practicing engineers from Korea, the US and Germany and the Netherlands could undertake a global product design course. Amateur astronomers could use and contribute data to the Òdigital skyÓ database of the emerging network of national virtual observatories [24].
We conclude this section my emphasizing that we are not advocating that higher education move completely into
cyberspace – into the lower row on figure 2. The point is that
cyberinfrastructure offers the opportunity for the processes of learning,
engagement, and research to occur through a traversal of all four quadrants of
figure 2. Activities in physical proximity will continue to be important
(distance does matter) but it may be appropriate to use it differently. (There
are also circumstances in which cyberinfrastructure can provide experiences
Òbeyond being there.Ó [25]) Some faculty are now
delivering their lectures asynchronously through the web and then using the
same time and place classroom for interactive discussion. As noted by Margrethe Vestager in an
early OECD meeting on the future of higher education, same time and same place
may become the most precious quadrant for knowledge communities to work in and
it needs to be treated accordingly. Higher education will not vanish into
cyberspace but those institutions that do not fully explore the use of all four
quadrants of figure 2 will likely lose competitive advantage to those who do.
3.3 Functional
completeness
Some research communities are now using cyberinfrastructure not simply to automate what they have always done, but rather to open fundamentally new paths of research and learning – to do new things in new ways. It has become a first-class tool for science. The ATLAS Experiment for the Large Hadron Collider [26] centered at CERN could not, for example, be done without advanced cyberinfrastructure. A few of these cyberinfrastructure based research communities are becoming functionally complete in the sense that all the colleagues, all the tools, all the instruments, and all the literature, and data that the research community needs are available through the Internet. Although a major challenge to achieve, we expect this trend to continue and thus people not connected to their fieldÕs Internet collaboratory, or not fluent in using it, could be excluded from the first-tier research communities. But on the more positive side, functionally complete collaboratories offer the potential for many more people to participate in first-rate research and learning communities on a global scale.
3.4 Comprehensive
and potentially more open access to information
The most visible impact of the digital age is access to data
and information. Data or information born or converted to digital form takes on
many new properties not possible with print-on-paper and analog representation.
It can be stored at atomic scales of density; it can be moved around the world
at the speed of light; it can be combined into new multimedia genres including
text, images, video, audio, and computational applets; it can be enriched with
metadata and hyperlinks; it can be perfectly reproduced and distributed at
negligible incremental cost, and it can be ÒreadÓ and computed over by machines
as well as humans. Although many
social and economic barriers remain, a true global information infrastructure
is within reach [27, 28]. The recent introduction of
the Goggle Scholar and announcement of a partnership between Google and major
research libraries (Stanford, Oxford, Michigan, Harvard, and New York Public)
to digitize the complete holdings over the next five years is accelerating the
realization of a complete digital information environment. Other mass
digitization projects are also underway.
The digital world creates intrinsic forces of convergence
and blurring of boundaries in information genres, institutions and practice.
Digital representation converges text, images, audio, video, simulations, and
other computational objects. Users will expect the distinctions between
libraries, archives, museums, data archives, and Òinstitutional digital
respositoriesÓ to blur – they will want all to be online and objects from
any of them to be found by an appropriate topical query. A single query might yield in a
convenient federated way books about George Washington, a copy of his first
inaugural speech in his own hand, model of a writing desk from Mount Vernon, a
class lecture by a prominent Washington scholar, and weather data for the city
of New York on April 30,
1789.
Digitization of information is necessary, but generally far
from sufficient to enable widespread access and use. There are issues of access
to computers, networks and mastery of necessary skills; there are technical
issues of how to federate, search and display digital collections that are
geographically and administratively distributed; and there are issues of
intellectual property rights and commercial interests. All of these, but particularly the
later, can work against the potential for universal access to comprehensive
collections of information and data.
Complex sets of forces are at work and experiments underway to define
the balance.
The entertainment industry, frightened by experience with
peer-to-peer file sharing (Napster, et. al.) have mounted an aggressive
Òdigital rights movementÓ [29] to secure broad legal and
technical protections on digital media including hardware modifications to
media players. The traditional scholarly publishing industry has been licensing
digital collections to libraries with terms under which the libraries cannot
guarantee future access to collections if they terminate an annual
subscription. Commercial copyright
holders have taken very conservative positions on digitize versions of their
holdings and on policies of fair use. And the extension of copyright duration
in the U.S. has largely eliminated the traditional notion of public domain [30], and the translation of the
original intent of copyright to the digital age is not, in many expertÕs opinions, going well [31].
But there is also an Òopenness movementÓ building within
academia that gives reason for optimism about new ICT models of scholarly
communication emerging that could lead towards more open at least for academic
literature. Digital publishing through the web eliminates the upfront,
fixed-cost of printing and distributing ink on paper. It also enables new
multimedia formats that are born digital; that may include audio, video, data
sets, and interactive programs that have no print-on-paper equivalent. It blurs
the distinction between libraries, clients, and publishers and potentially
disaggregates the stages in the life cycle of information creation, access,
use, and re-use. Several trends are noteworthy:
1.
Serious exploration of open (free) access to well-credentialed
publications in which authors do not give away their copyright to commercial
publishers who sell them back to libraries at high profit margins. A good
example is the Public Library of Science. [www.publiclibraryofscience.org].
Recently Springer, the world's second largest
scientific publisher announced adoption of Open Access (OA) publishing.
Springer Open Choice allows authors to choose to pay $3000 for OA print and
online publishing. [Information World Review http://www.iwr.co.uk/iwreview/1156517].
2.
Evolution of alternate licensing models for digital objects
that help re-establish a public domain of resources and encourage their
creative use in derivative products. Creative Commons creativecommons.org is at the forefront of this movement. It
is Òdevoted to
expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and
share.Ò
3.
Shift to work flow models in scientific research that produce
and share more intermediate products on the path to refereed, archival
publications. The pre-print server movement is one example, and examples of
preprint or e-print servers are easily found with a Google search on these
terms.
4.
Establishment of Òinstitutional repositoriesÓ that more
reliably capture, organize, and preserve the digital information products of a
university or other knowledge-based institution. The D-Space Project, now
becoming a federation of respositories, is a seminal example at www.dspace.org. A special case of an
institutional repository is the MIT Open Courseware Initiative (now becoming a
consortium with other schools) that is offering MIT course material free to the
world.
5.
Scientific research communities, especially in genomics and
geosciences are now cooperating on creating community databases as well as open
source community computer codes that are intended to be both built and use by
broad communities.
A report for a 2004 symposium at the U.S. National Academies
on Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its
Implications, discusses many of the
developments, challenges and opportunities for scholarly communication in the digital
age. It is available at The National Academies Press at www.nap.edu.
3.5 Examples and places for further
information
The NSF cyberinfrastructure report [16] includes many examples and
references to the application of cyberinfrastructure to the creation of
collaboratories, grids, and e-science communities. Other supplementary sources
on both the technical and social dimensions of CKCs include [32-36]. To convey a more tangible
idea about the effect of a CKC on the practices of a specific science research
community we conclude this section with a bullet list of vignettes of payoff
from a ten year collaboratory experiment with a space physics and upper
atmospheric research community funded by the NSF and centered at the University
of Michigan. More details on the Space Physics and Atmospheric Research
Collaboratory (SPARC) is available at [37].
á
Shared, tele-instruments
and sharing of expertise on their use;
á
Rapid response to
unexpected natural events (e,g, solar flare) and ability to mount opportunistic
data gathering campaigns;
á
Multiple instruments and
eyes on the same events and increased fusion of complementary expertise;
á
Previously isolated
observational instruments federating into a global scale observational
platform;
á
Enhanced
cross-mentoring/training between team members (faculty and students);
á
New & earlier
opportunities for grad students to interact with and be known by the leaders of
their field;
á
Enhanced participation
by faculty and students at other than the lead institutions; support for
Òlegitimate peripheral participation;Ó
á
Used to provide
authentic, inquiry-based learning in undergraduate and pre-college level
geo-science courses;
á
Supported distributed workshops
for post-campaign data analysis;
á
Enabled data gathering
session recording and re-play for delayed participation by others around the
world and supported hand-off of experiment management to in normal working
hours around the world;
á
Data-theory closure
– built deeper ties between the experimentalists and the
theoreticians/modelers (models were run in data campaign to predict where to
steer the instruments for more effective observation);
á
Provided a Òliving
specificationÓ to stretch vision of possibilities for others.
4
Possibilities and Issues
4.1 Possibilities
In the previous sections we have sketched some of the trends
around ICT and its embodiment as Òcyberinfrastructure,Ó and summarized some of
the key generic features of cyberinfrastructure-enabled knowledge communities.
The emerging picture is one in which cyberinfrastructure becomes a powerful
platform for supporting the fundamental mission of higher education in
learning, research, and societal engagement but doing so to a large extent by
providing more resources and opportunities to individuals and the communities that they choose to
form and join. It enables a dynamic web of
virtual communities cutting across traditional institutional boundaries. These
communities, as they become functionally complete, may well become the ÒrealÓ
communities --- the place one needs to be to participate at the frontier of
their discipline. Cyberinfrastructure helps create the conditions for a
learner-centered approach to education that build synergy between 1) learning
inside the formal classroom; 2) learning outside the classroom through
engagement with diverse cultures and contemporary societal problems; and 3)
research and other creative activities at all student levels.
The empowerment of students and faculty to pursue their
goals outside the walls and structure of the institution raises questions about
the obligation of institutions to provide such infrastructure and about the
associated threats to the status quo. It also raises questions about the
obligation of the institution to fully embrace the technology and to become an
ecology of experimentation on how to use it to better carry out their mission.
The masterful creation of experiences and the reputable credentialing of
mastery of knowledge and skills will, for example, continue or likely increase
in importance.
James Duderstadt[2]
provides several more specific examples to illustrate important potential
paradigm shifts:
1.
Globalization of research activity, as new collaborations
enabled by cyberinfrastructure compete with traditional organizations such as
the research university for the loyalty and participation of scholars.
2. Newly emerging research communities that compete with and break apart the feudal hierarchy that has traditionally controlled training (particularly doctoral and postdoctoral work), empowering young scholars and enabling greater access to resources and opportunities for collaboration and engagement.
3.
The impact of cyberinfrastructure on the ÒcultureÓ of
scholarly activities and institutions, e.g., publication, collaboration,
competition, travel, and the ability of participants to assume multiple roles
(master, learner, observer) in various scholarly communities, the increasing
importance of creativity relative to analysis as powerful new tools of
investigation (e.g., simulation, massively pervasive sensor arrays) that are
enabled by cyberinfrastructure.
4. At its most abstract, the ÒuniversityÓ is a community of masters and scholars (universitas magistorium et scholarium), a school of universal learning, that embraces every branch of knowledge and all possible means for making new investigations and thus advancing knowledge. These two characteristics, scholarly community and breadth of both intellectual topics and tools, have remained the core elements of the various forms taken by the university from medieval times (e.g., Paris and Bologna), through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, to todayÕs research universities. We already see these elements appearing in new forms enabled by cyberinfrastructure, e.g., global, domain-specific communities of scholars detached from traditional institutions such as universities, and exceptionally broad digital collections of knowledge such as digital libraries or the archives of search engines such as Google. Could these be the precursors of a new form of the university (perhaps a truly world university), essentially appearing spontaneously out of the vacuum state of the cyberspace enabled by cyberinfrastructure?
4.2 Issues
We conclude with a list of topics and issues to initiate
reflection and conversation among convened experts on the topic of ICT and the
future of higher education.
1.
How do we make the opportunities and threats of CKCs
more visible and compelling enough to gain the attention of leaders and to
mobilize timely action? How will we align the necessary stakeholders and
construct the case for investment?
Although as mentioned in the first section, there are growing deliberations and writings of the topic of ICT and the future of higher education, it has not in general translated into strategic and systemic action by the leadership of higher education. What further should be done, especially to explore the international and global scale implications? How do the opportunities afforded by CKCs relate to the European Higher Education area (EHEA) Bologna process and the European Research Area (ERA) initiatives?
In particular the next phase of the scientific research Òcyberinfrastructure movementÓ needs to engage the various stakeholders of science and technology, and help them to understand the opportunities and challenges presented by rapidly evolving digital technologies. While research agencies can provide leadership and seed important efforts to build and exploit cyberinfrastructure, it is critical to engage those institutions such as research universities, corporate R&D organizations, and national laboratories where scientific research, training, and application actually occur, since this is where the greatest impact of–and the greatest commitment to invest in–cyberinfrastructure will occur. So too, those stakeholders dependent upon the application of science and technology such as industry, government, and education will be strongly impacted by cyberinfrastructure (e.g., through the availability of scientific knowledge, the collaboration of researchers with practitioners, the increasing pace of scientific discovery and application) and hence need to both informed and engaged.
Since cyberinfrastructure is of major importance to a broad array of science and technology activities (research, training, application) and institutions (government agencies, universities, industry), it is important to stimulate conversations among the various stakeholders so that both understanding of key issues and development strategies are coordinated to some extent. How do we do this?
2.
How do we organize and finance the building and
sustaining of the appropriate common cyberinfrastructure?
Even though there is a growing
consensus that R&D investments in ICT provide high return on investment and
that additional investment is needed to build and sustain cyberinfrastructure
and related services, at least in the U.S., very little new money has been
allocated to this goal and the near term prospects for incremental funding are
not good. The same is generally true in state supported institutions and is
part of the general paradox that just as we have unprecedented opportunities to
reinvigorate, even revolutionize education, the public has never been less
willing to invest in education as a public good. Is there any way to reverse this, at least with respect to
creation and innovative application of cyberinfrastructure? Do we need a short, compelling
Òmoonshot goalÓ to galvanize interest and create willingness to invest? If so,
what is it?
ICT offers the potential for
providing better and even new services at lower cost but getting to this point
generally requires additional investment and a long period of funding for both
the old and the new before reallocation of funding is possible. A prime example is the JSTOR project
[www.jstor.org] initiated by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. The project has
created a reliable and warranted service for providing higher education
long-term access to digital versions of complete back issues of core academic
journals, especially those appropriate for undergraduate work. The access
through web portals and powerful search engines is much more effective than
going to a physical library. A goal of the project is to enable many academic
libraries to stop storing back issues of
journals, to reallocate funding to other activities, and to avoid the
need for more bricks and mortar.
But the trust of the system to give courage to librarians to dispose of
their paper is just barely starting.
But even if new funding is secured
there is still the complex issue of how higher education will come together to
create and sustain a cyberinfrastructure (based upon open standards and perhaps
open source middleware) that enables virtual communities to interoperate across
institutional and national boundaries. There need to be agreements and trust
built for distribute support and sharing of information and other resources for
the common good. There need to be new or re-charted consortia. From where will
leadership come for such an undertaking?
3.
Were do we find the human resources with command of the
complex array of social and technical issues around building and managing
CKCs? What training and incentives
are needed for academic communities (faculty and students) to adopt new
paradigms?
The creation and management of CKCs
require professionals that combined competence in the technical and social
issues of these new organizational forms as well as some fluency with
disciplinary activities in supports. Faculty and students must also have
opportunities for retraining and experimentation.
4.
What is the new balance between inter and intra
institutional cooperation and competition implicit in CKCs? How will we create
incentives for giving and taking and supporting common infrastructure for the
common good?
One of the most pervasive
influences of ICT on all knowledge-based organizations, including higher
education, is to change the boundaries between cooperation and competition
within and between organizations. Higher education needs to cooperate in
creating and sustaining a shared cyberinfrastructure for the common good. The
cyberinfrastructure will then be a platform for new structures of cooperation
and competition between distributed teams of researchers, learners, and
practitioners.
5.
If cyberinfrastructure does in fact enable broader
participation in higher education, what is our societal responsibility to use
it this way? How do we make high quality educational opportunities available to
the Òbottom of the pyramid?Ó Do universities need a stronger global presence in
order to truly be universal and strive for uni-versity (unity from diversity)
in the digital age?
6.
Given the increased reach and connectedness and the
need for co-investment on shared resources what type of alliances make sense
and how do we approach forming them? What about international alliances?
7.
How can we change the model of education from
teacher-centered to learner-centered (from producer to consumer driven) and
what role do CKCs play in this change.
Although it runs against the grain
for faculty control, some major universities are mounting strategic programs to
more intentionally move to a learner-centered culture. The University of
Southern California (USC), for example, has created a new Vice-Provost to oversee
such initiatives and includes the following in the job description:
The
learner-centered university focuses on the educational needs of the student
rather than the structure and needs of the teaching university.
Learner-centered education enhances classroom teaching with new pedagogical
approaches and the use of technology, engages students outside the classroom in
experiences that connect learning to contemporary problems, and offers
significant research opportunities to students at all levels. Integrating classroom experiences with
research led by renowned faculty offers learning opportunities rarely available
in major research universities, especially at the undergraduate level. Learner-centered education at USC will
increase the level of academic challenge, promote active and collaborative
education, increase student and faculty interaction, enrich educational
experiences, and provide a supportive campus environment. Students will graduate with skills in
critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and strong written and oral
communications. The environment
will attract prospective students at all levels and improve retention.
8.
What are the potential tradeoffs between built
infrastructure (bricks and mortar) and cyberinfrastructure on the structure of
the campus? Can the capital and increasing recurring costs of the physical
plant of universities be reduced through greater adoption of
cyberinfrastructure? How should
new buildings be designed or old buildings renovated to create more harmony
between the physical and virtual communities; between local and remote
resources?
9.
How do we evaluate the impact of CKCs in learning,
research, and societal engagement and feed it back into a process of iterative
design? What emerging deeper understanding of human learning can inform the
design and evaluation of CKCs?
10.
Can CKCs be critical in achieving lofty aspirations
such as
a. improving
equity of access to higher education;
b. opening
up the opportunity for more experiences and increasing the probability for
discovery in the Òwhite spacesÓ between disciplines;
c. enriching
the diversity of participation, perspective, ideas, and experiences;
d. enabling
sharing of resources and greater amortizations and leverage on
resource/facilities investments;
e. supporting
both existing teams and communities, as well as accelerating the formation of
new teams, fields, disciplines;
f. supporting
rapid formation of teams of complementary expertise to respond to unexpected
emergencies such as a SARs outbreak.
11.
How does
use of cyberinfrastructure relate to potentially radically different
post-secondary systems?
To diversify the perspective I am
reproducing, especially for consideration in the context of the
opportunities afforded by cyberinfrastructure-enabled knowledge communities, the following provocative questions proposed by
Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief
economics commentator at the Financial Times, in the aftermath of
a previous OECD sponsored workshop on alternate futures for higher education.
a. Can we envisage some fundamental changes in the education systems as a whole? Could we, for example, envisage a complete shift away from public provision of primary and secondary education? If we did, how might this affect tertiary education?
b. How far can we envisage a world in which undergraduate education becomes universal and is provided in the same way as secondary education is today – that is by people who are entirely teachers, not researchers, and are employed exclusively by the state?
c. If research functions moved entirely into separate institutions from those providing undergraduate education, can we envisage these functions being separated even from most post-graduate education?
d. Can we alternatively imagine the entire privatisation of university education, with the state playing a limited role in financing students (probably through loans) and supporting specific research projects?
e. How far can we envisage education being life-long, with people taking up entirely new careers in later stages of life? How might the university system adapt to such a change?
f. Can we envisage the globalisation of universities? Could institutions move increasingly outside national systems? This has already happened with some business schools. How far might this go? Would there then be a global elite system on top of national non-elite systems?
g. Even if we did not imagine such globalisation, how far can the export of university education go? Could we imagine a time in which the majority of students in most top-rate universities in OECD countries were foreign?
h. Can we imagine a total separation of the different intellectual strands in the contemporary universities, with humanities in different institutions from science and social science, instead of the comprehensive institutions we have today?
i.
Can we image a situation in which scientific research and
corporate research were almost completely fused? What impact might this have on
the independence of universities?
5
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