The Ed Techie

Pity the austerity natives

Mike Caulfield has a post on how automation of middle-class jobs, increases competition for poory paid job, which removes the incentive to innovate in technology for those jobs. It made me think how many postgrads going into an academic career now don't really expect it to be well paid, or secure. They approach higher education career with a very different mindset than I did. When I came into academia it was with the hope of getting the "cushiest job on the planet". Professors used to be part of the prosperous middle class, now they hover just above the precariat.

This chimed with another thought I'd had which was that for my daughter she has mostly only ever known living in a post-financial crisis world. She was born before 2008, but most of her formative memories will be of the age of austerity. Going on the principle that a bad naming idea worked once, so why not try it again, we could label her and her generation "austerity natives".

What will be the attitude of austerity natives to money and government? There was a report out today about teenagers in the UK (basically, they're a lot nicer and care more than the media give them credit for). But what of the generation after, and specifically their relationship to money and economics? Will they be fearful of credit, having seen the damage it caused? Will they be like children who were brought up in a strict household who go a bit wild when they are suddenly let loose at uni? They may have a frivolous attitude to money, because hey, it's all screwed up anyway. I suspect there is an interesting longitudinal study in there somewhere...

How to dismantle a sector, stage 2.

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:

1. 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.
2. Student number control and capping of fees will be used strongly and undermine some universities
3. A piece of legislation favourable to private universities will be slipped through on the back of another bill.
4. Up to 10 unis will go to the wall and others will retract significantly.
5. 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.

How to dismantle a sector

I'm not an overtly political animal, unlike many of my colleagues, so maybe this post is misguided or misinformed, but increasingly working in Higher Ed in the UK feels like working in a beleagured sector. Many people will feel like this in the current crisis, so higher ed is no different in that respect, but it now feels like it is not only suffering the same fate as all sectors, but is actually the victim of an ongoing campaign. I sit in many meetings with colleagues, in this university and across the sector, where we end up shaking our heads and laughing with a mixture of amazement and hysteria at the next cumbersome plan that is being foisted upon us.

As I said, I'm not that political, so maybe I've got some of the following wrong, in which case, please correct me. But here is how I interpret the last few years, and some supposition about the next few:

• The student loan scheme is forced through, and the coalition seems to have not considered the scenario that most universities will charge the top rate of £9000.
• The scheme then turns out to be more costly to realise than the existing method.
• In a panic, the government then introduces Student Number Control, so that it can cap the number of loans it gives out and can ringfence that money.
• As I understand it, the situation with part-time students is too complex at the moment (when is a student studying, or in-between studies, what counts as a full time equivalent, etc), so they have avoided student number control at the moment. But it will probably come in to play for 2014.
• However, because it will look politically damaging to allow students to 'buy' their way on to courses, the student control figure will apply, regardless of whether the students are taking out loans or not. Universities could then find themselves in the position of turning away students who have the money to study and who they have the capacity to teach.
• The student control numbers however, do not apply to new private universities because they want to grow that sector.

WonkHE has a lot more insightful stuff on student number control if you want to dig down into it.

And this is avoiding looking at the situation with research. The higher education sector in the UK was a widely respected, profitable and functioning system. It was by no means perfect and certainly wasn't efficient, but it worked. I appreciate it worked because it was funded to an extent by the UK taxpayer, but even in hard economic terms, this shift from Government debt to private debt doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Not all debt is equal - Government debt can be long term and at low interest rates. Private debt creates a liquidity trap in times of economic crisis, because individuals seek to reduce their debt and thus don't contribute to growth, thereby creating more debt. And a nation's debt is best measured by combining Government debt, financial institutional debt, and personal debt. Shifting it to individuals then doesn't reduce the overall debt, it just increases the damage it does to your economic outlook.

Socially it's a poor idea too, in times of crisis society undergoes a seismic shift - people lose jobs in one sector, but retrain, re-educate and create a new one. But if they can't afford to study (or are put off by the austerity rhetoric) then this shift doesn't take place, or is at least limited. 

This may sound like special pleading - "we should be immune from the winds that batter the economy because we have nice beards" - but it isn't. Like many people in the sector, I expected and accepted that higher education would go through a period of increased accountability and efficiency. We weren't prepared though for this sustained assault, combined with a dangerous level of incompetence. 

And all this when you want to shift to being a knowledge economy - strange times indeed.

 

Random debt relief

I my last post I pointed to some research which suggested that random selection of a proportion (not all) of politicians led to greater efficiency, and that a similar model might be useful in the allocation of research funds. 

I'm not an economist, so I expect to be mocked for the next proposal, but here goes anyway. A similar approach might be a more effective means out of the financial crisis than straightforward austerity. This is based on two assumptions:

1. Individual debt relief is more effective at generating growth than bank bailouts - the reasoning here is that banks don't actually distribute the money very far. Individuals will spend more if their debt is relieved. They act as a more effective conduit to get money into the system in a distributed manner than banks.
2. A random element introduces a level of unpredictability into the system, which can prevent stalemate.

So instead of giving £50 billion here, or €100 billion there to banks, a sustained programme of individual debt relief is established. It works like this:

• A useful but not excessive amount is determined. Let's say it's £100,000. Not a lot to a bank but to an individual a substantial amount.
• A 5-year programme is established of a set amount per annum, say £50 billion (that may be too much, it may be not enough)
• The money is allocated at random to households, in a lottery fashion. Crucially there is no quality filter, people do not bid for the money, or put in proposals. There might be a few simple rules in place, eg you can't have it twice, maybe convicted serious offender are ruled out, etc. But largely it's a random process with a high chance over the 5 years of being successful.
• There are no restrictions (apart from existing laws) on how it is spent.

What would happen would be that it would be spent in a variety of ways, each helping the economy. So many people will clear debt. This helps banks, but also benefits the local economy since those people have more to spend on meals out, shopping, etc. Others may decide to start up that business they've always dreamed of, while others still will use it to retire early, thus freeing up a job for someone else, etc. Undoubtedly some people will spend it in ways we wouldn't like (on becoming an alcoholic, emigrating or buying Katie Price books), but you just have to accept this.

Over a sustained period enough people would have received it for it to have a significant impact in most areas, without leading to rampant inflation as it is still a minority. And before the argument that the way out of debt is not more debt argument is raised, this isn't really increasing overall debt. A nation's debt is made up of the government's debt, individual households, financial institutions and non-financial institutions. Currently we are swapping some of the financial institution debt for government debt, but creating no growth. This plan swaps some of the individual household debt for government debt, but would, I suggest create growth.

I'll go back to being an educational technologist now.

 

Ed tech & the new academic reality

In my last post I tried to set out some new(ish) realities for academics in the UK. In this post I want to think about what these might mean for educational technology. I am not going to discuss the broader implications for higher education and research as a whole, as there has been lots written about that. Again, I am going to attempt a neutral tone, my aim in this post is not to bemoan the state of affairs (I do that enough in other posts), but to think through what it means to operate in this context.

So in terms of ed tech, here are some thoughts:

Less time for play - if greater accountability is key, and there is a focus on cost and return, then exploring technology is likely to need greater justification. That isn't to say it will be cut (see next point, it may even increase), but rather that it will need to be set out in clear terms. So for example, taking some study time to develop a blog will be justified because once established it will eliminate the need to conduct face to face update briefings, or it will meet the public engagement profile of a unit. But exploring technology with no direct, or clear goal, is likely to be frowned upon.

Technology as efficiency driver - one of the strong justifications for the adoption of technology is likely to be around efficiency. When a case can be made that adoption of technology will lead to greater efficiency, then it is likely to meet with approval. This can be fairly cynical, but it may also be fruitful, for example if learning analytics leads to intervention which helps keep a student on a course then it's beneficial for both the university and the student.

Technology to replace campus expansion - in DIY-U Anya Kamanetz sets out a good case of how tuition fees have increased to rise in the US, often to fund the building of more extravagent campus facilities to attract more students. A kind of arms race has been created, except with sports facilities and cafeterias instead of nuclear weapons. A possible impact of the new academic context is that the online status, reputation and facilities of a university become significant, particularly as estate enhancement becomes prohibitively expensive. This may not mean building your own social platform, but it may mean making sure you have a good Facebook presence with people monitoring it, have actively engaged online academic staff, create online content for people other than students, etc.

Interest in cheap or free technology - higher education has often set about creating its own versions of technology, or buying in enterprise versions to be run in-house. As course and IT budgets get slashed, then encouraging staff to adopt existing third party tools is likely to be seen as a means of keeping courses vibrant.

Research as hobby - I've argued elsewhere that the granularity of research can be seen to be shifting. As data becomes open, free tools become available and dissemination routes democratised, much of the research that used to require a project fund can be performed by the individual now. As more of the day job focuses on managed work, academics will find the type of online environment the best place to conduct their discourse and research, extending into their personal lives.

Rise of online versions - it is likely that online conferences, remote participation, virtual project meetings, online open journals, etc all become more prevalent as the costs associated with travel, time away, and physical artefacts place pressure on the traditional formats.

Increased significance of online identity - if academics are travelling to fewer conferences, and doing less of the general scholarly activity that brings them into contact with others in their field, then establishing an online identity and cultivating an online network of peers will become increasingly significant. This will be if not the main route, then a very significant one, through which they share ideas, find collaborators for research projects, and establish reputation in their field. This may link back to the efficiency argument.

Lack of new blood & reliance on outsourcing - the increasingly commercial-like atmosphere in higher education may mean that many smart young people (particularly in the ed tech area) who might have come into higher ed because of the freedom it offers will go into industry, perhaps in start-ups that offer services to higher ed. This may result in a skill gap between higher ed and industry in the use and development of new technology.

So these are both the challenges and opportunities for educational technology in our new context, as I see them. I'm sure I've missed some, so let me have it...

The new academic context

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/nualabugeye/2636448990/>

My starting point for this post is that the financial crisis and changes in funding are going to radically alter the higher education environment within the UK. In this post I want to set out the context within which academics will have to work from now on.

There are two things to point out: the current climate may see these changes become a reality, but they are also the culmination of a number of trends that have been occurring over the past twenty years or so; I want to set out the new context in an objective manner, and to avoid ascribing value to these changes. This is the way I think it will be, for good or ill. In the next post I'll try and explore the implications of these changes from an ed tech perspective.

The following list is based on watching discussions in the mainstream media, blog posts, twitter conversations and my own work. It could be I'm wrong about these, or indeed for many people they have been the reality for a long time anyway, but I feel it's worth setting them out to get a clear picture of the environment which we will need to operate within.

Greater accountability - this is really the over-arching one. When academics are largely being funded by students debt, and when universities have to cope with smaller budgets, then they academic activity needs to be accounted for and linked to some funding.

Funded research only - following on from the above research activity is likely to be on allocated, externally funded (or internal strategic) projects only. Time for individual, autonomous research that is not directly funded or related to teaching will largely disappear.

Limited general scholarly activity - there is a form of unwritten agreement of reciprocal activity in higher education that is largely uncosted. Reviewing articles, examining students, giving presentations, giving feedback on project proposals - all of these are essential for the functioning of the current system. But they are not evenly distributed and some people can find themselves in almost constant demand from other institutions. While a certain level of this activity will be permitted, and encouraged even, my guess is that it will be limited, as universities come to view every day an individual is doing a staff development talk at another uni as one where they are paying their salary and getting no direct return.

Cost as primary deciding factor - this is one that has definitely been around for a while but is likely to reach its apotheosis now. Cost has always been one of a number of factors to consider, for example when putting on a new course or conducting some research. Other factors such as academic credibility, long term potential, variation in offering and academic freedom have also come into the mix. Increasingly only proposals that demonstrate a reasonable return on investment will be countenanced.

Institutional focus - 30 years or so ago it was possible to view the function of universities as employing academics. Smart people needed a job, but they were pretty much left to their own devices, researching what they wanted, teaching occasionally and often being absent from their institution for long periods. Their affiliation could be seen as being to their discipline. This has been changing for a long time (and was never true for all academics anyway) and we will now see a much closer alliance to the host institution. 

As I mentioned, these have been trends over recent years anyway, and what we will see now is their culmination. It is also the case that there will be some variation between universities and individuals as to the degree to which they are experienced, but in general this is the context within which academics will operate. In the next post I'll explore what this means from an educational technology perspective.

Higher Ed - room for disruption?

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/annetta/1954945479/ by Annetta)

(Another excerpt from my Digital Scholarship book):

In other posts I have looked at some of the impacts new technology has had in other industries and what we might learn from this in higher ed. While the lessons these sectors offer are instructive, it also provides a basis for considering in what ways higher education differs, and thus may not be subject to the same influences. The major difference is that higher education is not purely a content industry. I argued in this talk that HE produces a considerable amount of content, which could be distributed and shared digitally, but its revenue is not predicated on selling this content, unlike music or newspapers.

It is undoubtedly the case that the vast amount of online content means that people now conduct a lot of their learning informally, using free resources. Combined with financial pressures, this creates a pressure, or an alternative competition for learning that is new to higher education. Anya Kamenetz details the convergence of these two factors in her book DIY U, arguing that “Do-It-Yourself University means the expansion of education beyond classroom walls: free, open-source, vocational, experiential, and self-directed learning.” This certainly represents a challenge to the monopoly on learning that universities and colleges have held for centuries, and one they should take seriously (through, I would argue, engagement with the technology and approaches).

However, even in times of financial crisis higher education has a certain resilience for two reasons: the social value of formal education is often increased in times of financial hardship; learning is not a zero sum game. It is this latter reason that I think is of real long-term significance to higher education. Even if people are learning much of what they require via open, online resources mediated through their social network, that in itself can generate the desire for further learning, and itself foster interest in formal education. Competition with informal learning is true to an extent, but it presupposes a set amount of learning by an individual, as if they have a limited number of cognitive learning tokens to be used up in a lifetime. But it is more often the case that learning begets learning. In this respect open, informal education is complementary to formal education, indeed something of a gift, rather than a threat. In a world that generates vast amounts of niche content which people are increasingly engaged with, either by generating their own, sharing or discussing, then the outcome is a larger population of active learners.

The challenge for universities then is to remain relevant to these learners. This means developing an appropriate curriculum, having flexible course options, using technology effectively and generating interest. An example of this symbiotic relationship would be between a photo-sharing service such as Flickr and university courses on digital photography. A great deal of informal learning occurs through the communities on Flickr, which can focus around themes or techniques, or the Daily Shoot site which gives photographers a daily task to perform (http://dailyshoot.com/). At some stage though many photographers want to further their understanding, or have a more structured approach and sign up for a course on digital photography. The Open University’s short course in this area has been one of its most popular, which since 2007 has run two presentations a year of 1000-1500 students on each cohort. 

More radically Jim Groom's open course on digital storytelling (http://ds106.us/), which combines 32 campus based student who are studying for credit, with learners from a global community studying for their own interest. The combination of the two groups is mutually beneficial. Participants are required to create digital artefacts and to share these on their own blogs and sites, which are aggregated together on this course blog. The course is fluid, with participants suggesting assignments, and distributed across many sites, using the hashtag #ds106 to group content.

These two examples demonstrate how the open, informal learning which many people partake in online is not necessarily a threat to the existence of higher education, and, given some adjustments by universities, can be a benefit.

There are two messages that higher education can take from this: the first is that it needs to engage in the sort of experimentation Jim's course represents if it is to turn the digital, networked and open approaches of learners to its advantage; the second is that it has the capacity to do so.

It is this second message that marks another difference with the sectors so often used as a comparison. Many of those industries did not have the revenue streams which come from accreditation and research funding to counter any loss of revenue from consumers finding alternative content freely available online. Higher education is in a position where not only does it need to disrupt its own practice, but it can afford to. It has sufficient resilience to do so because unlike content industries, that disruption does not completely undermine its current model. Higher education can be viewed as a long tail content production system, and with little effort much of what it produces could be shared as open, digital resources. Higher education can afford to do this, because their ‘customers’ (if we use that term by way of analogy with other sectors) are not purchasing that content directly – they are instead students who are paying for a learning experience which comprises that content along with the other elements, most notably support, guidance and accreditation. Other customers include research councils, commercial partners, media, charities and governmental agencies. Again these customers are not directly paying for content, and with the exception of cases of commercial sensitivity and privacy issues, they often have much to gain from openness and wide dissemination.

Some of the concerns relating to the impact of new technologies in other sectors then do not apply in scholarship, or their impact is reduced. The concerns regarding how artistic endeavour is to be rewarded in a world where all content can be easily distributed for free are very real if you are a musician, for example. These concerns are not the same for academics however, who are usually employed and so are not deriving their income from content in the same manner. This is not to underestimate the impact and challenges that face higher education, but to highlight that disruption by new technologically driven approaches is not as threatening to core practice as it has been in other sectors. This may account for why the innovation and adoption of such approaches has been less prevalent in higher education, since the urgency to respond is not as great. 

 

Projects, innovation & the small price of a coffee

<Image coffee love http://www.flickr.com/photos/javaturtle/133316103/>

Stephen Downes pointed at this piece from Tony Bates arguing that the choice facing higher education institutions is often phrased as one of 'innovate or die'.  It prompted me to blog some half baked thoughts I'd had around innovation recently.

In my presentation on Academic output as collateral damage I suggested that organisations like projects. They are set up to work with project structures, which have lines of responsibility, a set of deliverables, milestones, and fixed budgets. I understand this and for a lot of tasks it is the best way to work. But here are three statements I would like to put forward:

1) The small scale, web 2 type innovation we need to see doesn't fit well into conventional project structures.

2) As money becomes tighter in higher education, there will be a strong push to control resources more, with everything and everyone allocated to a specific, accountable project.

3) The organisations that do best in the financial crisis will be those that can manage small scale innovation, and transform this into a varied offering, so that at low cost they can meet a wide range of needs.

You'll see the dilemma here - in economically straitened times, the instinct is to control everything tightly through a project structure, but this project structure is not well suited to the type of innovation you need to engage in to perform well. The institutional instincts may be contrary to the overall well being of the institution as a whole, rather like a wounded animal fighting off a vet.

A very, very, small example of this happened last week - I wanted to try a video experiment with a few people at the OU. I asked if we could provide them with coffee and biscuits to entice them along and help with the ambience and was told no, unless it was related to a specific project. In fairness I think I could have got the coffee money if I'd tried a different route (and we didn't go ahead with the experiment anyway). But it's the type of example we've all come across probably. My point here is that this might be exactly the sort of innovation you want to encourage, or maybe it's providing pizza for a bunch of developers (what cliche?), or getting someone's time for a couple of days. All of these types of informal projects become increasingly difficult in a project-centric approach.

The solution is probably to set up a non-project project, or something like Google's 10% time when people are free to explore other approaches, but these are by their very nature, unpredictable and uncertain. And in times of financial crisis unpredictability and uncertainty are not favourable characteristics for a proposal. We know, however, that these are precisely the qualities that lead to exciting developments online. So, how to square that circle?