CCEG SOCIAL VALUE & INTANGIBLES REVIEW
This process is actually very attractive if you are a research leader who has an interest in teaching your subject - most of your involvement is up front in helping to devise the curriculum, create teaching materials and tests. No trudging across campus in the rain dragging a trolley full of handouts! With the bureaucracy of the machine removed, you might also find that you can spare the time to dip in to student forums when a cohort is running, and give people feedback on their assignments. Can you see where I’m headed with this article yet? Udacity would like you to think that they have effectively reinvented the university, replacing all of the baggage and inertia of the ‘machine’ with actual machines - machine learning and artificial intelligence, customer relationship management, online assessment and so on. We can imagine a future history of higher education, stating that this was the point when it became clear that the people and processes of the machine were actively hindering academics and learners alike. This was the moment when everything changed.
It would be all too easy to dismiss the likes of Udacity, however our truly digital universities should be learning from it. We need to be using technology pragmatically to help reinvent ourselves, even if that means quite profound changes to the machinery of the institution. If this all seems far-fetched, cast your mind back to the days when Amazon was just a book seller. Now it has metamorphosed into the Everything Store that Jeff Bezos famously envisaged, but along the way it has also transformed everything from logistics and supply chains to cloud computing. Perhaps Udacity will be the Amazon of higher education, but why not your own institution?
Whilst there is undoubtedly something to this, I think it is far too simplistic a view. For a start, some subjects are simply difficult or impossible to teach online - even with Virtual and Augmented Reality, there are limits to what we can do around lab simulations, virtual field trips and the like. What’s more, there are a plethora of peripheral activities at university that help the learner to become a more well-rounded individual, to contribute to society, explore interests and develop skills that aren’t formally part of the taught course program. An example of this is my alma mater, which had a popular hot air ballooning club and a busy community action group. May 2018
38