Showing posts with label models. Show all posts
Showing posts with label models. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Spreading Out the Cost of Higher Education

If we accept three to six years of education debt is a debilitating start to life for our children perhaps a better model would be to spread the cost over time by shortening the on-campus experience, and running the final years part time as distance education while students are in employment. The on-campus experience would then be focused on its role as a critical bridge between high school and the work place. So instead of the traditional model of lectures, tutes and semesters we have one or two years on campus using a blended learning approach in a simulated work environment, preparing students for the move to a lifelong learning mode with online distance education, and campus visits for intensive mode active learning. to achieve this we would have to first convert all years three, four, five onward courses would always be available in the distance/intensive education mode.

Mode Benefit Year Group Physical Time
On-campus simulation of the work environment.
Self paced online learning combined with collaborative projects done in physically collocated teams in a simulated office environment, with some active learning tutes.
Bridges the high school gap, and inducts students to lifelong learning skills, and realistic work environment skills. Makes better use of technology.
Years 1 & 2
On campus in work-like collaboration spaces with codes of conduct and complimented with active learning tutes.
Self paced with multiple deadline options per year
Online distance learning,
Self paced online learning complimented with collaborative projects done in virtual teams, and some on-campus intensive mode active learning.
Suitable for students currently employed or with work experience. Fits better with busy workers. Gets students into the work environment faster making study more relevant, and spreading out the cost of education.
All years 3+ including postgraduate study.


At work (or home) with some on-campus active learning tutes.
Self paced with multiple deadline options per year
Thoughts?
Simon Collyer

The Work Simulator Model

Here is a proposal to address the issue of work readiness and the relevance of the campus in the future of higher education. I’ve just been to a presentation where one single unit is spending $5.5M to fit out 400 study spaces, and that’s not including the actual building costs, just the fit out. Considering a university that has 50,000 students, at $14K/student these fit outs would cost $700M+ to scale up for all students, and then there are the lecture theater refurbishment costs on top.

Now consider that we know that employers prefer graduates with work experience, yet the actual percentage in some disciplines is extremely low, as low as 3% for natural and physical sciences graduates in 2014 Australia for instance. The current preferred model is placements but that approach is hard to achieve as it depends on significant industry cooperation, and has quality control challenges.

An alternative is to progressively build a simulated work environment at Universities, to reduce duplication of student space (lecture theatre seat + tute seat + Library seat), and to improve the quality of study spaces, but also to prepare students for their work lives.

We already know that we want to move away from the traditional lecture format, because a) its too far from a real work environment, and b) it originated 400 years ago when knowledge was only available from someone at the front of a theater. Lets also assume that the ideas of an early undergraduate (first year) student learning online from home is not a realistic or desirable because a) its too much of a leap from the high school experience, and b) it is poor preparation for the modern work environment, which despite all the experiments with telecommuting is largely based on physical collocation.

We also know that libraries have largely replaced most book shelves with study spaces, and educational designers are replacing tiered lecture theatres with flat adaptable collaboration spaces for active learning. We also have some specialty spaces like engineering workshops, biology labs, and others.

So what can we do that is scalable to all students, and higher quality than the old study hutch, that bridges the gap between the high school environment and the office. What would this look like? Well some universities are already delivering most of their lectures over web conferencing systems like Zoom, even though they have great campuses. At these universities students can attend class from anywhere: in person, or from the library, or from home, or from the recording if they like. Using that technology we could:
  • Create standardised affordable study spaces for students that replicate typical physical work environments. Often this may be open plan offices, with breakout rooms.
  • Deliver most live lecturer interactions over web conferencing systems like Zoom, noting that a lot of learning content will actually be pre-recorded.
  • Increasingly ask students work in cohorts on projects that apply learning, at the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy.
  • Provide 'live-in' tutor supervision of students in these environments, modeled on real work supervision, with activities designed to be as close to real work as possible, potentially with deadlines that are not semester based but perhaps multiple per year (e.g. 6 not 2) to allow more flexibility around start dates. 
  • Use this model for first or second year students only, before sending students out on full time placements, swapping them to external mode learning consumed in the work place, delivered on the same virtual classroom tools, potentially complimented with intensive mode active learning experiences.
Key Advantages?
  • Large dollar saving from not duplicating fit out and construction costs for lecture theatres, tute rooms, and Library study spaces.
  • Greatly improves the quality and availability of study spaces for students: "If I don't get to uni by 9:00am I have to go home because there is not enough space".
  • Creates full flexibility for learners in terms of where they consume their classes.
  • No more room booking nightmares.
  • Way more agile for expanding and contracting study programs and student numbers- because just moving students around generic spaces
  • Work ready students.
  • If the third year is increasingly converted to external mode the space cost saving would be enormous.
  • Its compatible with a sticky campus strategy that also offers cultural, sporting and entertainment experiences, right outside.
Eventually you could take this model a step further combining with the fragmented model for higher education, where the campus itself becomes a service that can be used for students studying at multiple education providers. The campus service provides:
  • access to special purpose labs and equipment required for completion of some programs,
  • a high quality personal study space,
  • a place to find group work collaboration partners,
  • a place for intensive model active learning,
  • a simulation of the future work environment, and a bridge from high school,
  • support,
  • culture,
  • sporting facilities.
Thoughts?
Simon Collyer

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Unbundled Model for the Future

One model for the future of higher education is the complete unbundling of services with most traditional functions outsourced. The driver for model is technology’s ability to achieve more efficient economies of scale across geographical markets, with higher quality and lower costs.
Up until recently most universities serviced a local geographical market with a tightly interdependent combination of services including teaching, research, and the authoring of learning materials. When wider markets were targeted, it was generally at the expense of local students, and without any change in teaching technique or economies of scale.
What will survive?
Online Teaching Focused Universities: If a large proportion of teaching went online, and a large portion of that went self paced, then the rise of the efficiency focused online university would seem a likely outcome. Specialist teaching universities could deliver better quality at a lower cost because they are: a) not redirecting tuition to subsidise research, b) not maintaining large physical campuses and c) not authoring their own learning materials (but rather licencing high quality materials), or running examinations.
Boutique On-campus Universities: Other universities will spruik their on-campus experience as a competitive advantage, but their fees will be relatively unattractive. Worldwide growth in student numbers may save these universities from any material loss in student numbers. They will leverage a convenient or attractive campus, large endowment funds, or significant reputations based on teaching quality or research.
Single Program University: If a university can build up enough of a reputation for expertise or research in a single program they may thrive with premium paying on-campus students, or alternately as a learning materials author or contributor.
Larger Research Institutes:  The higher education research environment may rationalise somewhat if an increased teaching focus reduces cross subsidisation of research.
How this model could be explored
  • In leading programs, a university could experiment with authoring quality learning materials, making them available via a publisher, a MOOC, or a learning object repository (LOR), in a collaborative manner, to achieve economies of scale, and potentially earn some revenue.
  • For trailing programs, a university could experiment with the integration of learning materials from external sources (MOOC, LOR, publisher, collaboration) into courses, using materials from publishers, Learning Object Repositories (LOR) and MOOCs into courses.  See if it is possible to achieve a higher quality at a lower cost for these programs.
  • Experiment with outsourcing examinations and exam invigilation.
  • Collaborate with employer groups to develop international quality standard for learning outcomes. This will make courses more useful and attractive to employers and therefore more useful, attractive and fair for the students who are paying the fees. If a course has community value but is not attractive to any particular employer, government subsidies can be used to protect them.
image
The old way… The changes afoot…
Setting learning standards Professional bodies are increasingly setting the standards
Authoring learning materials Publishers, Learning Object Repositories (LOR) and MOOC authors are producing properly designed high quality learning materials, in a way unmatched by what 10,000 unqualified instructors can each do on their own.
Teaching New specialist teaching universities can deliver better quality at a lower cost because they are:
- not spending tuition fees to subsidise research
- using more efficient online technologies
- not saddled with legacy infrastructure
- they can licence better quality learning materials
- can use qualified (teaching skilled) instructors
Provide learning environment (campus + LMS) can be outsourced to Coursera, MOOC.org etc.
Examinations can be outsourced to professional proctoring service providers. This model has been used extensively in the IT industry for many years www.proctoru.com , http://www.kryteriononline.com/ etc.
Research For the universities that do research well, this may be all they do, and without tuition subsidies. They may be able to leverage their research to collaborate and get a cut from authoring learning materials.
Community Engagement MOOCs reach a much larger community than any university could ever do before

Thoughts?

Simon Collyer

Monday, July 22, 2013

Lifelong Learning Model


The life-long learning model involves the university offering an induction year which provides a transition from school study to independent study, and then predominantly offering distance education after that... but focused more around skill groups than degrees... skills relevant to promotions and career changes that incidentally accumulate into undergraduate and post graduate degrees as the student progresses through life.

This has the by product of spreading out the cost of education without reducing quality. Furthermore it taps into the fact we will all have to be constantly reeducating ourselves. With high dropout rates in higher education, is it reasonable to expect students to spend three or four or more years studying full time before they understand the relevance, or otherwise, of what they are learning? With high rates of technology change is it still possible to teach content in one year that will still be relevant 4 years later? Once a student leaves full time study, how can they return to the traditional degree on campus if they have a mortgage and family to sustain?
Thoughts?
Simon Collyer

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Future of Higher Education - A Franchise Model



“Over the next 10-15 years, the current public university model in Australia will prove unviable in all but a few cases.”





One Possible Answer...

Franchised Blended Learning Programmes

Higher education franchising is a growing phenomenon. As with all commercial investment in higher education, there are significant possibilities for problems. So far, the franchisers seem to be working on the McDon­alds principle. It would be interesting to ask why no one is looking at the educational equivalent of Intercontinen­tal Hotels—aiming at a higher-end market segment-—as a better model (Altbach 2012)

Think what happened to music distribution, and newspapers. The key difference between music/tv/etc and education is that education will often (but not always) benefit from a face to face component, and a local content component, lending itself more often to the franchise model over the fully centralised MOOC model.

Lessons from the past...







There were few signs of trouble in the newspaper industry before a critical mass was reached (in online readership), and then a very dramatic drop in revenue. This has happened in a number of other industries of course, most notoriously in the music industry. Since then they’ve lost 88% of their stock value, dramatically cut costs and staff, they belatedly moved to an online model to stay afloat.

In education, there has been an increase of around 12–14 percent per year on average in enrolments for fully online learning over the five years 2004–2009 in the US post-secondary system compared with an average of approximately 2 per cent increase per year in enrolments overall (Allen, I. E. and Seaman, J. 2008)


Drivers...
•Globalisation and the internet have already resulted. in Universities competing against each other globally, and will lead to dramatic rationalisation, and improvements in economies of scale in delivery, and larger investments in quality control and marketing.

•An internationally mobile workforce will drive employers to increasingly prefer courses that have a global reputation and quality standard (over a local unknown university)

•International Marketing will drive employees to increasingly prefer courses that have a global reputation and ‘known good’ quality standard. The quality standard will not just be tied to the academic reputation of the author. But significantly to marketing, pedagogy, and quality control. The new top 50 university brands may therefore be different to the current top 50, based on whoever adopts this model first, and establishes a reputation for their franchise.
•Rationalisation in a global market means it is untenable that 20,000 universities will be creating or certifying ‘Introduction to Business 101’ when it can be done to a much better standard and a much lower cost, by just 50 universities. There will be rationalisation.
Through collaboration and economies of scale it should be possible to deliver:

  • Much higher quality courses
  • Much cheaper courses
  • Protect provision of diversity. When a course may not be sustainable at a single institution it may thrive at a national or global scale.
The Model...



The model holds that there will only be three types of programme delivered by a University:


•Franchisee - Local delivery of a course/programme written and owned by another University that is an acknowledged worldwide brand/leader in that course. There will be less than 50 course franchise author/owners for each programme. The owner will collaborate to customise courses for different environments. E.g. James Cook has a chance to be one of the top 50 Marine Biology franchise owners, if they move now.
•Franchiser: The most lucrative but hardest to achieve: Creation (and delivery) of an internationally franchised course/programme actually written and owned by the University itself, with a market leading reputation, demanded by employers and employees.
•Custom: The least common & least lucrative: Delivery of a custom local course/programme that has little international or national franchise potential, for the local market. Least number of students.
 



Strategy...

•Franchiser? Identify the key areas you can compete internationally on, and build an internationally competitive course or programme, and aggressively franchise it for delivery around the world, certifying delivery by other universities.
•Franchisee? Where you are not a world leader, seek out best of breed courses authors by other Universities, to deliver more efficiently and at a higher quality.
•Local Needs? Identify what courses might be required to service just the local market, that are unlikely to be delivered under the franchise model.




The Franchiser...

A franchise course is one that would typically :be written by a university known for leading research in the field; •have a higher number of professional designers;
involve local collaborations to customise to different markets. I understand for instance that US education providers are doing this in Nursing for the Australian market;
have a bunch of people marketing it, and certifying delivery at other unis, to maintain reputation and quality control and therefore marketability.. to the extent that students looking for a course in Miami for instance would demand to study a well known internationally branded course at Miami University.


Change Plan...


Identify the schools that are capable of being truly world class, delivering programmes that internationalise well.
Partner and Merge: Find partner institutions and start with a contra deals with another respected universities where we will deliver their ABC programme if they deliver our XYZ programme, and grow from there. This could also be achieved by amalgamating the schools of two institutions together. e.g. Marine Biology with James Cooks into one school to create world programmes.
Design: Inject world class blended learning ed designer resources to that school.
Certify: In the same way as Microsoft certifies its training providers, the school would have to create a process to certify the instructors at many other institutions (100s) that will deliver the programme. The same process would be applied to local instructors.
Market: Build a marketing capability to aggressively sell the course to other institutions as a package with the advantage it being: world class course materials based on world leading research, using best practice teaching


The Transition Period…


Traditional universities may be bypassed as partners for delivering franchises, as too inefficient. Likely a modern blended course would require much more modern delivery environments and organisations (online and off). Actual test delivery could be outsourced to organisations like Prometric.


Traditional universities that are not preparing now to be in the ‘top 50’ author creator franchise owners, will probably be left behind, and have to chose between delivering franchisee or local courses (requiring dramatic changes), or contracting to pure research model through loss of students.


The best model for could therefore be a combination of type1 and 3 courses along with more focused research.


The eventual top 50 are the ones that are quietly and frantically building their new business now, and not just experimenting.

Are you ready for this?...





Thoughts?
Simon Collyer

References
Allen, I. E. and Seaman, J. (2008) Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 Needham MA: Sloan Consortium

Allen, I.E. and Seaman, J. (2003) Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003 Wellesley, MA: The Sloan Consortium
Altbach, Philip G. (2012) Franchising: The McDonaldization of Higher Education 
Cavanaugh, John  and Cavanaugh, Christine  (2006) Franchising Higher Education