Adding Value: Higher Education and New Technologies

Yesterday, I attended a luncheon discussion headlined by Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week, a popular show on U.S. public television. The event honored woman leaders and Ifill's remarks were both insightful and inspiring. When asked by a member of the audience what issues she thought most deserved to be covered in the media, but were not, she said that there were many, but had recently heard President Barack Obama state that he wished more attention would be paid to his efforts to promote and improve education. Indeed, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been unusually engaged, challenging educators to rethink their approaches and tools. This is largely because the world is changing rapidly, and there is a sense among many that the U.S. education sector is lagging far behind.

This fact was underscored at a reception and panel discussion I attended last night. Also geared towards woman leaders--in this case, those in the higher education sector--the reception brought together woman administrators for discussion about new information and communication technologies, social networking and higher education. The discussion was moderated by the president of the state public radio corporation who had also attended the Gwen Ifill luncheon earlier in the day and opened the panel with this quotation from her: "Transformation happens when you are looking the other way."

From there, she offered a synopsis of what she considered to be the big ideas driving the technological revolution. One of them was simply what she called "free." That is, information and other materials are now free thanks to today's technologies. She spent some time expounding on this idea, as she found it particularly problematic. She pointed to an ascendant culture that no longer pays for information because, in her words, "if it is free, why pay?" This culture, she said, is responsible for numerous newspaper reporters losing their jobs because, while print media organizations such as the New York Times plow big money into investigative and other stories, search engines like Google comb the internet, aggregating these stories and giving them away at no cost whatsoever. And, in the case of higher education, she noted, free online courseware is equally hazardous for professors who will soon find themselves without work as students opt for free online courses over classroom time. Free, a defining characteristic, of the method by which information and ideas are transmitted today was certainly the most threatening of the big ideas she discussed.

And, to conclude her marks, the moderator showed a rather ominous YouTube video with a scary soundtrack called Did You Know?. Against a background of flying question marks--think the opening credits of Star Wars, but with question marks rather than stars--the video posed questions, answers and facts about the new technological era. They included things like: "India has more honors kids than America has kids" and "China will soon become the largest English-speaking country in the world." Scary stuff, eh? What was clear from these opening remarks, overblown as they were, is that the times are certainly changing.

What was not so clear from the remarks or the ensuing panel discussion was how public radio, newspapers and higher education institutions plan on adapting to this changing environment. Just this week at the 2009 Educause Conference, higher education technologists gathered to discuss the future of libraries. According to an interesting piece in Inside HigherEd, for many at the conference, new information and communication technologies spell the demise of libraries. After centuries of existence, a mere couple of decades with Google Books and YouTube have just about wrapped it up for enduring institutions. Others, however, see in the history of libraries a tradition of and capacity for adaptation. The question is not how do libraries persist despite a changing environment, but how do they add value to it?

As someone who is absolutely thrilled about MIT's Open Courseware, TED lectures, iTunes U and the abundance of free information on the Web, I must admit that I find information gathering and analysis these days to be a bit daunting. In fact, I blog in order to process what I read, and colleagues tell me that they do the same, whether blogging, tweeting or using other tools. Isn't this the critical purpose of the new library and university? To help us process all of this free information rather than to sell it to us?

Perhaps one of the reasons why we do not see much media coverage of President Obama's education initiatives is because the education sector is not yet onboard with his, or any, change agenda. Indeed, Secretary Duncan recently called for major reform of teacher education programs prompting many program leaders to nod in agreement as they pointed fingers at each other.

The technology driven transformation we are witnessing is real. I hope higher education institutions do not turn their heads from this one.