Winds of change in education

With the advent of distance learning technology and advanced teaching capabliites indicate to furture where blackboards would be a passe, and this has set the pace for independent learning.

"I see education moving to emphasize the notion of competencies rather than courses or degrees," said Subu M Kota, Chairman at the Boston Group. "I can see education moving more to a portfolio model in which students learn certified skills that they can acquire from numerous sources," he quipped. US based Boston Group is an e-learning software player and has a development center based at Hyderabad.

Imagine you are the CIO of a major research university. As such, you get to dabble with the coolest high-tech equipment around, including the control room you've built that's both the pulse of your institution and the envy of the local broadcast station. Displayed on each of the dozens of monitors are the "class" proceedings of numerous courses.

To your right, screens show the work of students enrolled in a distance chemistry course who are using 3-D virtual reality applications to conduct experiments with dangerous corrosive acids. To your left, business majors are reviewing a multimedia case study featuring video, text and audio clips of a beleaguered company's executives. And in the center of the room, several screens are monitoring the university's virtual learning environment set up in collaboration with far-flung schools and local businesses. Even though it's barely past dawn on an August morning in 2029, you can see that several hundred learners are "attending" various courses by communicating in two-way, real-time dialogue with their peers and teachers.

If you thought heading up an IS shop in a post-secondary institution meant having a cushy schedule and summers off, think again. In the future of higher education, IT -- and the CIO -- have a seat at the head of the class. While the mission of the nation's institutions of higher education would remain to educate students and conduct research, the way organizations deliver and carry out that mission is changing. In addition, the rapid changes in the societal role of higher education have made universities an environment that's extremely receptive to the helping hand of IT.

"We at Boston Group will help in designing the IT Infrastructure frame work for higher educational institutions to effectively deliver and carry out the mission of technology implementation for effective reach to the students," Subu added.

The Boston Group would hold the hand of the Higher Educational Institutions and help them to educate the teachers as a continuous enterprise, including their initial training, and also their career-long professional development, through workshops and seminars.

Competitive Edge

As schools use technology to solve these problems, technology itself becomes a competitive edge. With the advent of distance learning, for example, barriers such as geography and finite classroom space begin to dissolve. To accommodate remote learners (to say nothing of the 18 year- 22 year old resident students who want to browse through the library's holdings without leaving their dorm rooms), universities must build robust, point-to-point networks and develop strategic IT plans. Schools that don't keep up stand a good chance of losing students to competitors.

The business schools at International School of Business (ISB) at Hyderabad and International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad are spending a lot of money on networks, wired classrooms and Web-based services as they wage a battle to attract the best students.

"It's important that we keep up with the state of the art and know what's going on at other schools. Moreover we are targeting to attract a large number of foreign students in the coming years, so technology and its application is very important for us," said V Seetaramaih, Director — IT at Hyderabad based ISB.

ISB boasts a wireless LAN environment that's wired with a number of ports where students, faculty and staff access the Internet, look up research material and send e-mail. Over the next few years, it is possible that the school would rebuild classrooms and faculty offices and wire them to facilitate fully electronic coursework.

IT has become a vehicle for finally revisiting aspects of pedagogy that everyone knows can be improved. "We know, for example, that one of the least effective methods we can use in many academic settings is the lecture format, but many professors continue to lecture in most or all of their classes. Some alternatives would be to engage students in discussion, to ask them to participate in certain learning activities as part of the educational process, to use simulations, and, finally, to have the students teach each other. This combination would represent a positive advance in pedagogy and consequently in learning. Technology can make the implementation of these ideas much easier," Subu explained.

There are two ways through which the application of technology leads to better pedagogy. The first is that well-designed modules, such as those produced by online education, large groups of students are encouraged to try out ideas, to experiment, to actually 'do' rather than only 'listen', without creating a huge workload for the faculty. As a result, professors move toward better modes of teaching because the personal cost of doing so is low.

The second is that those teaching a virtual or online course have found that they cannot simply move their passive lecture to the Internet and keep student interest (students report they are often bored by lectures in classrooms as well, but it is harder to get up and leave). As new and more effective approaches are created in an effort to reach out to online students, these new techniques are migrating to traditional classrooms.

One simple example is the improvement in communication in traditional classes through the growth of online faculty-student interchanges, which first appeared on a regular basis in online classrooms.

Developments in distance learning also open up a range of new educational products and services, said Abhishek Mishra, Director at Hyderabad based Click2Learn. For example, he predicts what he calls the "unbundling" of higher education; instead of attending one school for a degree, students could pursue individual courses or pieces of a degree at various institutions.

While the price of college education has risen, many people feel that the education quality has eroded. At many public universities, students often need five years or more to earn an undergraduate degree because they can't get slots in required courses. "People are asking themselves, 'Is public education really cost-effective if it takes five years to get a degree?'" Mishra added.

A Changing Relationship

Universities are addressing those increasing demands by treating students more like consumers whose business they care about capturing. Increasingly, schools are seeking to establish lifetime relationships with students. "The notion that students are customers who have more than a four-year relationship with an institution is a new concept," said Mishra.

At Hyderabad based ISB, tuition covers a standard LapTop, complete with the required software components. Each campus building is linked via wireless LAN and all the students, faculty and administrators use to transfer files, search the Web, access proprietary information quite easily.

Traditional barriers of entry such as geography, physical facilities and accreditation are receding. In future, choosing a college or university would resemble choosing a utility company: Students would shop around for the best, cheapest, fastest and most convenient programs without regard to geographic location.

Before schools go virtual in a big way, however, the Internet would need some revamping. Not too far in the future, students would sit in the comfort of their own homes and "attend" business courses over the Web that feature audio, video and text formats and allow interaction with fellow students. That's not to say that the four-year residential college experience would disappear. But people would choose the programs that suit their schedules, interests and career goals, integrating formal learning with their jobs and lives.

Internal Change

As the needs and demographic makeup of their customers’ change, schools are borrowing a page from private industry by reengineering their administrative processes as well. The goals are familiar: Institutions want to become more efficient by reducing functional handoffs and pushing decision-making out of the president's office.

Universities are integrating long-segregated academic and administrative computing environments. A client/server-based local area network linked by a campus-wide area network is the architecture of choice for most academic institutions. "Campuses that have been mainframe-based for many years are making the transition to client/server," said V Seetaramaih, Director — IT at Hyderabad based ISB.

While a world of IT-enhanced higher education sounds ideal, schools still face several challenges. For one, IT can make life tougher for folks in the development office.

Challenges notwithstanding, the consensus seems to be that higher education is an exciting place to work right now for IT folks. Said Mishra, "While technology is not a solution to all our problems, its use creates opportunities for enriching teaching and learning," he added.

Higher Education at a Glance

With the costs of education outpacing inflation and consuming huge portions of middle-class incomes, colleges and universities are being forced to become more efficient in an attempt to contain tuition costs. In addition, with increasing competition from nontraditional players such as online programs and for-profit companies, traditional institutions would develop innovative programs that are flexible and geared toward teaching marketable skills.

No longer bound by geography or time, thanks to distance learning and the Internet, students can pursue educational opportunities in ways that best fit their lifestyles. In many cases, a portfolio of courses with established competency levels would replace traditional programs that emphasize grades and degrees.