Cut prices 90 percent (or more) (Kasanoff and Hinshaw).
I can't imagine what would happen if the sector's income was reduced by 90%, but how is this for a model? Make all courses Moodle courses. Make all courses open to a highly streamlined and free sub-enrollment process. If a student engages fully and submits satisfactory assignments, then they can be enrolled retrospectively and when they pay the fee their study points are recorded and accrue towards their qualification. All lectures, online or offline, are simply open. A popular model for start-ups is first to drive traffic and second to look for ways to generate income from that traffic. Of course a lot of start-ups fail, and maybe that failure rate is something that isn't in anybody's model for educational courses. But actually, why not? Look, I'm not actually proposing these ideas be adopted. They're too wacko, I'm aware of that. I'm just exploring ideas, using the ideas as objects to think with.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Kasanoff and Hinshaw disruption 2 of 7
Dramatically reduce complexity (Kasanoff and Hinshaw).
Already underway is the reduction of the huge number of tertiary qualifications we have in this country (NZ). It must have been really painful for some people to give up their babies, and undoubtedly some niche students will miss out, but did it not have to be? Next we need to get to a point where tutors aren't constantly re-writing the materials. Perhaps they could use software to provide personal annotations to existing bodies of material in one-tenth of the time. MOOCS reduce complexity in one way (students access the course in their own time and place and on their own device) but increase complexity another way (by studying with a number of different institutions and individual professors on a number of different platforms). My masters thesis may have been titled "Student-user modeling in connectivist environments", but I don't know that I'm very much nearer to solving the thousand and one problems connectionism and mobility create in the context of accreditation.
Already underway is the reduction of the huge number of tertiary qualifications we have in this country (NZ). It must have been really painful for some people to give up their babies, and undoubtedly some niche students will miss out, but did it not have to be? Next we need to get to a point where tutors aren't constantly re-writing the materials. Perhaps they could use software to provide personal annotations to existing bodies of material in one-tenth of the time. MOOCS reduce complexity in one way (students access the course in their own time and place and on their own device) but increase complexity another way (by studying with a number of different institutions and individual professors on a number of different platforms). My masters thesis may have been titled "Student-user modeling in connectivist environments", but I don't know that I'm very much nearer to solving the thousand and one problems connectionism and mobility create in the context of accreditation.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Kasanoff and Hinshaw disruption 1 of 7
Totally eliminate your industry’s persistent customer pain points (Kasanoff and Hinshaw).
Pain point 1. Students become stressed, and the stressors boil down to a few problems common to most people: time, money, and fear of failure. I think the solution lies in sufficient quality induction.
Pain point 2. After graduation when a dearth of employment opportunities first becomes apparent. It's in the weeks and months after completion that many students find that the marketing material that attracted them to the course was filled with false promises of a well-paid career. The solution could be punishment in law for institutions that make false promises about employment prospects. What happened to the advertising standards people, couldn't student unions take action through them?
Pain point 1. Students become stressed, and the stressors boil down to a few problems common to most people: time, money, and fear of failure. I think the solution lies in sufficient quality induction.
Pain point 2. After graduation when a dearth of employment opportunities first becomes apparent. It's in the weeks and months after completion that many students find that the marketing material that attracted them to the course was filled with false promises of a well-paid career. The solution could be punishment in law for institutions that make false promises about employment prospects. What happened to the advertising standards people, couldn't student unions take action through them?
Kasanoff and Hinshaw disruptions
Bruce Kasanoff and Michael Hinshaw wrote a piece for LinkedIn, "7 Ways To Disrupt Your Industry". They list these seven disruptions that the brave and the reckless can try out on their industries to bring about radical change for the better. It struck me that with our "industry" in crisis maybe it's time the brave and the reckless stepped up to the mark. I thought I'd see how Kasanoff and Hinshaw's seven ideas translate into the context of tertiary education. Contributions welcome!
Here are their seven disruptions:
1) Totally eliminate your industry’s persistent customer pain points.
2) Dramatically reduce complexity.
3) Cut prices 90 percent (or more).
4) Make stupid objects smart.
5) Teach your company to talk.
6) Be utterly transparent.
7) Make loyalty dramatically easier than disloyalty.
And a link to the original article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1839009/7-ways-to-disrupt-your-industry
Here are their seven disruptions:
1) Totally eliminate your industry’s persistent customer pain points.
2) Dramatically reduce complexity.
3) Cut prices 90 percent (or more).
4) Make stupid objects smart.
5) Teach your company to talk.
6) Be utterly transparent.
7) Make loyalty dramatically easier than disloyalty.
And a link to the original article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1839009/7-ways-to-disrupt-your-industry
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