Pete Pereira's Blog
This blog is a reflection of my thoughts (personal & professional) as well as a medium to share things I'm reading or watching.
CYA Statement: This blog is a reflection of myself both personally and professionally. The thoughts here are by no means representative of what my employer thinks. Don't like what I say or share? Take that up with me & not who I work for.
I want to eat here. Right now.
Kid’s songs that don’t such to much featuring Sesame Street. They don’t make many things that are crappy though.
Thanks to Jeff Lail and his EmergentEdu initiatives, I’ve been thinking a lot about how technology will impact Higher Education. I’m all for technology helping us to make higher education more accessible, affordable, & attainable.
However, every form of advancement that our society embarked on (which includes technology) has produced both positive and negative impacts. You just have to look at history. For example, the industrial revolution helped make our countries produce more products at a more affordable rate due to the ability to mass produce. We also learned over time about its negative impact on the environment (Check out the video in the article).
Anyways, so I’ve been wondering if this revolution/disruption/whatever its called will create a bigger (or maybe just different kind of) caste system. There is a caste system in place already within higher education, it’s called the Carnegie Classification. I wonder if this push these boundaries even more or not. They way I see it, if things like edX really reinvent higher education, then we might have to add more layers to the type of institutions that exist in higher education.
I’m actually really excited that if edX is successful, then more people will have access to quality content to learn from - the interwebz is filled with lots of content but a lot if it is crap.
Because I am a student affairs professional, I see the cons of not being already to provide a holistic experience for everyone. I don’t want people to just learn content, I want them to also learn skills. I see the possibility of people who still want that experience as Jeff Selingo over at the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests (link) still going through the “traditional” higher education experience while those that just want do whatever it takes to land a job, going this route.
Who will suffer from this? I think online universities and for-profits have a lot to lose because edX will be targeting a lot of their student pool. And honestly, I’m okay with that.
But, I think people will also suffer in the end because I think a lot of these people are also folks that come from lower socio-economic statuses. Since edX is more affordable, I don’t blame them for taking this route instead since their primary goal is to get a job asap so that they can attempt to move up the SES chain. So, will “traditional” institutions (well, the ones that survive) become more elitist again? Isn’t that a step backwards in higher education’s history of becoming more accessible?
Like I said there’s a lot of positives. A recent article in FastCompany talks about how we can capitalize on the opportunity to stop asking students to memorize things and get back to things like creativity. We need to do the same in higher ed.
I’m gonna stop here because I’m just rambling but I wanted to make an attempt to put some thoughts down & get some feedback. So, please, fire away. I think it will help me with my thoughts.
