Reflections on the future and the role of IT service departments

Yesterday I had the privilege of opening the 26th IT Conference for polytechnic and university IT service departments. My brief was to share my views on the future of tertiary education in NZ and the role of IT service departments in contributing to organisational strategy. It was a really interesting topic to prepare for, and I got a lot out of an indepth reflection on just where our ISS fitted into th OP picture and what it could /should do.

I have cut and pasted some extracts from that address about the future as I see it. I will share my perspectives on the role of IT service departments in the next post:

"I would like to talk about three aspects of the future as I see it : blended delivery, collaborative provision and open educational resources.

From a technology perspective the future is here now, and will merely be characterised by more, more sophisticated and more persuasive communication technologies, with more and more people capable and willing to use them. The challenge for educationalists is not to focus on the specifics of technology but how to use that technology wisely and effectively in the interest of enhanced outcomes for learners. And such outcomes may come in the form of more accessible learning, more relevant learning or more “useful” learning.

Neither our tertiary institutions nor the vast majority of our teachers have yet to appreciate let alone embrace fully what this future of learning is likely to be: a paradigm shift! A paradigm shift from supply driven learning (our knowledge, our place, our time, our resources) to demand driven learning (learner constructed knowledge with learning occurring when and where the learner prefers); from taught learning to flexible learning; from single institutions to networks, from formal learning to informal learning.

Many tertiary institutions, including Otago Polytechnic, have embraced blended learning, or flexible learning, as an underpinning educational delivery strategy, and I have no doubts that this is our future. The blend is currently and inevitably dominated by on-line learning and video conferencing, but now enhanced by mobile learning which will undoubtedly grow in importance. Also in the learning blend will increasingly be the use of social networking tools which open up powerful new ways for learners to communicate and interact as an integral part of their learning.

We have embraced blended learning primarily to improve access and to respond to the demands of growing markets which cannot easily access traditional face to face learning.

And what are these markets? We still have the traditional distance market i.e. people who live in rural areas or who have work lives or personal circumstances that prevent participation in face to face education. E’learning in all of its forms offers a vastly enhanced learning experience over traditional paper based distance learning (although there is still room for this option), an enhancement primarily through greater interactivity and connectivity with “teachers” and other learners.

But this traditional market is not a good enough reason to adopt a blended learning strategy. Rather, two other trends are making their presence felt. The first is workplace learning. More and more people want to learn in their workplaces – on-the-job/in-the-job learning – or from their workplaces. And we are not just talking about narrowly focused skills training to meet current employer needs. We are also talking about the acquisition of qualifications which are traditionally gained through attendance at tertiary institutions. Remember, work places more often have the technology, especially broadband, which individuals may be lacking at home. Also, more and more employers recognise that supporting staff in their educational development is good for business.

But the third market for blended learning is that wave of learners coming through our system who have only ever known a world with the internet – the so called millennium generation. I do not need to labour the point, as we all know that our kids are more likely to be IT savvy than not. For today’s generation of primary and high school students connectivity is a given, social networking is a norm and instant access to information an expectation. Some of you will be aware that progressive preschools are now using the internet, digital cameras and blogging as an integral part of early childhood education. It will only be a short 15 years before these children are our students, and what else will they have learned on the way that we do not currently envisage?

Is anyone in any doubt at all that what we teach and how we teach it in tertiary institutions must and will change? I see a future, not too far away, which will see the most important role of the academic as a designer of learning, and the facilitator of learning journeys – increasingly personalised to the individual learner. We will need more academics with high end educational capability than we do high end discipline capability – as we see a world where subject/discipline expertise is no longer confined within institutional boundaries. If I am not being too provocative, does every polytechnic business school require its own legal experts, economists, strategic management specialists? And we can ask the same question of most qualification areas, and especially as we focus on more specialist knowledge and experience.

And we will need more genuine facilitators of learning – staff who have the skills to guide learners as they tap into the vast range of resources available to them, including expertise which they currently do not access.

So, blended learning, enabled by communication technology is a future which will expand exponentially.

So, too, is collaborative provision of that blended learning. I believe we are on the cusp of a new approach to how we organise the provision of tertiary education – one which will see institutions collaborate in not only the development of educational programmes but in their delivery. I have just alluded to this with my question about whether or not every institution will need to hire its own discipline experts in every area of specialisation. The question will be, are we willing to sacrifice the sacred cow of institutional autonomy and embrace a collaborative delivery model? We have the means, but do we have the will? And this is irrespective of the current regulatory context in which TEC is urging and government is expecting more collaborative behaviour. We also have one of the most basic of reasons to collaborate – to save costs in a world where we can never expect our institutions to be adequately funded.

So, I do see a future where institutions increasingly collaborate in the interests of learner access and organisational sustainability – collaborations which include shared services, co-ownership of qualifications, collaborative development of programmes and co-delivery of programmes. We have the technology and are facing an increasing market of learners who are willing and able to embrace blended learning options. We can share our discipline specialists as well as our support personnel. Learners in Dunedin can be taught by teachers in Tauranga and counselled by counsellors in Greymouth. This future is here now in a limited way. Otago Polytechnic is currently engaged in a co-delivery pilot with five other institutions. It is not easy, it is a paradigm shift, but in my view it is the future. Will we embrace it?

And this brings me to the third element of the future as I see it – open educational resources. MIT foreshadowed that future some years ago when it put all of its course materials on line – with restrictions on use by other providers, but none the less a good start. Of course, the internet is open, and innovative teachers are already constructing programmes around the information and tools which are freely available. The future , however, is the purposeful sharing by tertiary teachers and institutions of learning resources, assessment instruments, courses and even whole programmes. We already have wiki books, I Tunes U and many institutions making podcasts freely available from their websites. We also have the likes of wiki educator through which teachers can collaborate on line in the development of resources and courses. The potential here is huge, but it will require institutions to shift deeply entrenched attitudes to IP and copyright. At Otago Polytechnic we have taken this leap and adopted a Creative Commons attribution licence as our default position, and we will be anchoring and coordinating an International Centre for Open Educational Resources to facilitate collaborative developments. This future is a must for a small country like New Zealand."