It turns out that there are no less than three MOOCs on open education coming your way. George and Stephen are running one now, David Wiley's one ran last winter and will run again this winter. And very last, I'm running one next March. My one really arose through logic and not a desire to ape George or David (although I do that often enough). I was writing a block of the new Masters level course on Innovation in education, and my block was on open education. I have a strong 'learning by doing' approach, so it made sense for the students on this block to experience it as an open course. So, the course itself is 22 weeks long, and mine is the second block, so for my bit students come out of the protected OU environment and into an open one, and it runs as a mini, self-contained course (in the OpenLearn platform).
After David's blog post the other day, I was joking with him and George on Twitter about competition between the open education MOOCs. In an effort to entice learners I promised that mine will have dancing penguins, booze and fireworks. Through her marvellous drawing skills, Giulia Forsythe visualised this for all of us:
Okay, I may have slightly oversold it there.
Firstly, I don't think the open ed MOOCs should be territorial or alpha male about the whole thing - we'll each bring different takes on it, and learners will prefer one style to another. It might be a good exercise in all three courses to get learners to compare the three in terms of pedagogy, content, technology.
Secondly, we should turn Giulia's penguin into a badge. Only the penguin badged MOOCs offer something different, either in terms or approach, coverage or activities. As I've mentioned before, the interesting thing about the early MOOCs, was the ability to experiment. This is what is lost in the new wave of industrial, commercial MOOCs. So to differentiate them, the experimental MOOCs can state what is innovative about theirs. So I'd claim that the penguin elements in mine are:
Postgrad level
Activity based, light collaboration model
Hybrid approach to fee-paying and open students
Combination of formal university systems and third party services
(I'd like to add badging to this, but there are some internal discussions going on around this, so we'll see).
Last night, after Nick Clegg's semi-apology over student loans (see comedy version with honesty subtitles below), I got involved with a twitter chat with an economist from Demos. He argued (very intelligently) that the loan scheme would actually save the tax-payer $2.5K per student, and that it should be viewed as a progressive tax, and not debt.
I don't know enough about economics to really counter his claim about the savings. It certainly appears that the Coalition were caught out by all universities charging the full fee, which would suggest it isn't being quite the financial success they had envisaged. But the fact/misleading rumour that it was unaffordable was only ever an extra insult/icing on the cake to what was generally perceived to be a damaging policy to higher education. "You've done all this damage, and it's worked out worse than the old scheme anyway" was the cry.
Let's accept for now then that it could theoretically save money in the long term. This doesn't mean it won't severely damage the higher education sector. And here I do feel on firmer ground, because economists (particularly free market ones) tend to ignore those pesky humans in the mix and assume a rational market.
I would like to propose two psychological factors that will come in to play, which I don't think have been modelled in any government plans.
Prospect theory - Tversky and Kahneman conducted a series of influential experiments in the 70s which demonstrated that people give loss more psychological weight than gain - put bluntly losing £20 has more significance than finding £20. People then adjust their behaviour accordingly - they are risk averse.
In our case this means they will perceive the student loan as debt, and that debt will weigh more heavily than the potential gain of a good job, a rewarding time, or future earnings. They will thus behave appropriately, with two courses of action:
a) Risk aversion - they don't go to university in the first place and take on the debt. This harms the higher education sector.
b) Risk reduction - they act as if it is current debt and seek to pay it off. This harms society more broadly, for instance, they avoid taking on more debt in the form of a mortgage thus impacting the construction sector.
This won't affect all students, just as some people are more risk averse. Some will judge it a risk worth taking and study anyway. Tversky and Kahneman also talk about the 'Value function", whereby the difference in loss between £100 and £200 is seen as greater than the difference between £1100 and £1200. This would suggest that the impact will be felt most keenly for those from less well-off backgrounds as the potential debt is perceived as a larger part of current wealth, it is a bigger risk
It would take a big research project to estimate the impact of this factor on student behaviour, so for now let's take a figure of, say, 20% fewer students applying, given that is a strong psychological factor found in many instances.
The panopticon of debt - the second factor is that of the panopticon. Taken from Bentham's proposal for prison design and adapted as a metaphor for society by Foucault, the panopticon suggests that when all prisoners/citizens can potentially be observed all the time, they act as if they are. As Foucault puts it:
"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection"
It doesn't matter that they aren't observed all the time, the knowledge that they could be makes them act as if they are. I would suggest future debt acts in a similar way. The knowledge that it could become debt and be paid off makes people act as if it is current debt, even if they never had to pay it off (because their earnings didn't reach a certain level). As with prospect theory the impact of this factor is likely to be felt more keenly in some sectors. Some prisoners in a panopticon prison will calculate the probability of being observed at any one time and overcome their fears, others won't.
This transfers the debt from a national one to an individual one, and at this level its impact is more toxic in the economy. The outcome will be the same as for prospect theory: a reduction in numbers applying and a reduction in spending from those coming out the other end.
Again, knowing the size of the impact of this factor would take more research than I can put into a blog post. But let's say it adds another 10% to our previous 20%, giving a total reduction in student numbers of 30%. Like the impact of these factors, it would not be evenly distributed, so Russell Group unis might see no decline at all, while others might see a drop by as much as 50%. This would surely send some under.
Now, it may be that we think a 30% decrease is desirable, that the higher education sector has become over-crowded. But it would be better to state this as an aim, and to work towards it (universities could do better planning then), rather than hope it occurs as the result of an unpredictable system. It would be interesting to know if any of these factors were considered when modelling the future of higher education?
I use this blog as well as our university repository system to keep track (and shamelessly publicise) those journal article things that your grandad told you about.
I have a new article out in RUSC (the open access journal from the University of Catalonia). It has the snappy title of "Digital scholarship and the tenure process as an indicator of change in universities". You can access the PDF here through our repository, or at RUSC here.
It's an extension of some of the stuff I covered in the book, and I'm making the argument that how universities respond to the challenge of recognising digital scholarship can be taken as a barometer for how well prepared they are for dealing with the complexities of operating in a digital, networked context. Here is a quote from the conclusions:
"Recognising and rewarding digital scholarship has a significance beyond the promotion of individuals. For universities, as they seek to manage change to a digital, networked society, it acts as a strong indicator and vehicle for change.
There are two main reasons for prioritising the recognition of digital scholarship. The first is the message it sends to individuals within the university. Because they operate in an open, digital, networked manner, digital scholars are often well known in their institution (for example, many of their colleagues will read their blogs). If a well-known digital scholar struggles to get their work recognised, then it sends a message to the rest of the university that this is not the type of activity that is likely to be rewarded, with a subsequent decline in its uptake. The reverse happens if that digital scholar is rewarded; it sends the positive message that academics should engage in this type of activity.
The second reason for recognising digital scholarship is to encourage institutional innovation. For example, universities are beginning to explore the use of Facebook to support students, or the use of blogs to disseminate research findings to the public, or new models of course development based on third-party content and crowdsourcing. There are very real benefits to the institution from these approaches, such as reaching new audiences, increasing the university profile without advertising, increasing student retention through improved peer support, lowering the costs of course production, developing new research methodology, etc. But it is difficult to realise any of these institutional approaches to new media if the university does not have a solid base of digital scholarship experience to draw upon. Having a range of digital scholarship experience amongst the faculty will be the key resource in realising the change required for many universities, and an appropriate reward and tenure process acts as a means of facilitating and encouraging this."
Over the summer I finally got around to reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. In case you don't know about it, Pinker makes the argument that violence of all forms has declined - between states, domestic, national and criminal. It's a lengthy book, but he goes through the arguments very carefully and brings a range of research together to make a compelling case.
What he does very well is take accepted arguments or facts and challenge them - for instance that the 20th century was the most violent one in history. He demonstrates how these are often based on a combination of a rose-tinted view about the past (we were all happy farmers) and a misreading of data.
I was often struck when reading it how lazy people are - and not just journalists or lay perceptions, but academics also. Certain beliefs become an accepted starting point, and when you really examine these you often come to some surprising, counter-intuitive findings.
In education and education technology I think this is also true. Many claims appeal to our "common sense" or widely held beliefs about how society is today, without really backing this up. For example, the raft of 'technology is destroying society' type books or beliefs often only draw on indirect data at best, but usually rely on anecdote. Take Sherry Turkle's argument that we're losing the art of conversation and becoming more isolated. What is this really based on? There is evidence that families are spending more time together, yet you would be hard pushed to find anyone who had this as a starting point in an argument.
Or take the argument that education is broken (which I've moaned about before). This often starts from the 'fact' that truancy is at an all time high, therefore schooling isn't working, therefore we need to do something radical. I haven't analysed truancy rates in sufficient detail (in fact there doesn't seem to be much meta-analysis of truancy rates), but I know the manner in which they are recorded varies considerably. One must also ask the following questions:
Is any change now a statistical one, or within the realms of normal variation?
Are historical comparisons valid (ie are they comparing the same measures)?
Can an increase in truancy rates be accounted for by an increase in population or targeted school attendance (eg if you are working harder to make sure certain groups are registered in school in the first place, will you get more truancy)?
Is it an increase in more pupils being truant, or the same number of truancy pupils being truant for longer? (eg this article suggests7% of pupils account for one third of all truancy numbers).
And so on - I'm not suggesting truancy isn't an issue, but merely making the point that we adopt lazy interpretations in education, and then make quite sweeping demands for change based on them.
And, naturally, I can't resist one more digital natives swipe on all this. The whole digital natives argument was dogged by this failure to make any real historical comparison and instead rely on anecdote and over interpretation.
Because ed tech is often dealing with new things, it is easy to do this. And I definitely don't advocate doing nothing until you have all the data 20 years from now when you can declare 'yes, the internet will be significant.' It's perfectly okay to have hunches, intuition, to draw from experience and to have a working hypothesis. But equally, because this stuff is all new, we should be forceful in making sure claims are really founded in evidence.
So here's an activity you can do with students, or just for the fun of it: Take a claim or widely held belief in educational technology and examine the precepts that underlie it. How solid are these? Are any of them subject to the kind of Pinker analysis and review?
For now, I would just heed caution to any argument that is based on something that is 'obvious to everyone'.
So last week, London Met university had their licence to act as a sponsor for overseas students revoked, so it can't teach its existing 2,600 non-EU students, or get new ones. This is unprecedented, and as well as being obviously distressing for those students, will send a loud message around the world about the UK's openness to overseas students.
I think there are three interpretations as to why it occurred:
LMUea culpa - it's all LMU's fault, they've been playing fast and loose with the immigration system and have been caught out. I'm sure there will be evidence of wrongdoing, indeed I would suggest the Government has been waiting for such a case where there is unarguable evidence, so it can take such action. But even if we accept that LMU are at fault, the reaction seems way out of proportion. A warning, a suspension, a fine would have all been reasonable - but revoking it and causing such distress seems a clearly targeted action to create publicity. Which brings me onto my next two options.
Sinister pressure - it was not the result of a direct order or intervention, but rather the outcome of pressure created by Government. As this piece points out, Teresa May is under pressure to hit targets for reducing migration, and student visas are perceived (incorrectly as I understand the process) to be an easy option. It is therefore part of playing to the home crowd Tories to be seen to be taking a firm stance. There is undoubtedly something in this, and combined with an element of dodgy behaviour at LMU it may be sufficient as an explanation. But I want to consider a third option also.
Conspiracy theory - John Naughton reminds us that "Whenever someone intelligent seems to be behaving oddly, the hypothesis has to be that they know what they’re doing and that you simply haven’t figured it out." Let's assume people in the coalition aren't stupid (yes, I'm not sure about Gove either, but let's go with it). On the face of it, the LMU decision is stupid. It is over the top, and will cause damage to the sector, when that sector is one of your primary exports. In times of financial crisis you would do everything possible to support such a sector, not undermine it wouldn't you? So, taking John's reasoning, this must mean we haven't figured out what they're doing.
Which heralds in the conspiracy theory. A while ago I blogged that higher education in the UK felt not just like any sector in a crisis, but one which was being deliberately targeted. In that post I was highlighting how the student loan scheme, combined with student number control would damage universities. If we give our conspiracy theory free rein, then having undermined the financial basis for the domestic market, the LMU debacle begins to look like the next stage in this plan, namely to undermine the overseas market.
Why then would the Government deliberately seek to destabilise an industry? The answer would be that it seeks to gain from that destabilisation. Having seen the problems it encountered by trying to reform the health system through due process and passing legislation, it doesn't want a repeat of this protracted and damaging scenario. A better approach is one of stealth - by financially undermining the existing structures, many universities will go to the wall. This will leave room for the private universities, which they have already made warm noises about (and remember, student number control doesn't apply to these).
By these commando tactics, the Government could achieve a radically different higher education model, with the high brand universities remaining intact, and the rest of the market provision from private universities, which fits better with a conservative free market model. And all without having a single debate in the House of Commons, or attracting any negative headlines.
Now, I'm not really one for conspiracy theories, and maybe it is a bit far-fetched. A combination of my first two explanations is more realistic. But, if the conspiracy theory is true, I'll make the following predictions:
We'll see more universities lose their sponsorship licence, or more likely, a 'toughening up' of the student visa process to continue to make the UK less attractive.
Student number control and capping of fees will be used strongly and undermine some universities
A piece of legislation favourable to private universities will be slipped through on the back of another bill.
Up to 10 unis will go to the wall and others will retract significantly.
Unis will be encouraged to partner with private providers.
Of course, if the conspiracy theory is true, then the stance universities & VCs take towards the Government, which has largely been one of cooperation, should change drastically. Just to emphasise, I don't say it is true, but if we see my five predictions above begin to come true, then we should be suspicious. Of course, by then it might be too late.
