A musing with a big hole in the middle of it…

For some time, I’ve wondered just how comprehensive that changes in the way that we receive, handle, publish, assess and archive information will be, in terms of the future of universities. Stephen Downes, among others, sometimes seems to suggest that the rationale for higher learning will simply move away from universities, as learning increasing occurs and even is accredited elsewhere.

So when I read a post like this from Tod Maffin

Listen. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are not a well-respected, branded “public radio station.” In today’s media environment, you are simply an option to add to the assembly line. Or not.
They will pick, swap, mix, rip, burn, podcast, mod, and mashup their media (or, soon enough, their software or devices will do that for them) to present them with a personalized view of the world.

So. Do you want to be in on that, or not? If you do, you had better start carving up your content. Make your content pickable, swapable, mixable, ripable, burnable, podcastable, modable, and mashup-able.

…I can’t help but perform a little thought experiment. Substitute “radio” (or whatever media outlet is having the ground beneath it swept away), pop in ‘university’ and reread. How much is still applicable? Now… Maffin’s thesis, while increasingly heard in (mostly online) discourse, is still something of an alternative, even revolutionary perspective. It might sound convincing, but who knows how things will play out? And media is a more anarchic sector of society than higher learning, change plays out much more rapidly. And universities unquestionably still pack considerable institutional, cultural and traditional punch…

But at the very least, developments in the world of media are clearly relevant to how we think about developing, publishing, sharing — hell, I really just mean how we think about using content…

Three paragraphs and a quote looking for an argument.

About Brian

I am a Strategist and Discoordinator with UBC's Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology. My main blogging space is Abject Learning, and I sporadically update a short bio with publications and presentations over there as well...
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4 Responses to A musing with a big hole in the middle of it…

  1. Jon says:

    I think things will change a lot more slowly than one might expect.

    Take the current blogosphere uproar about the University of Chicago’s refusing tenure to Daniel Drezner. For the most part, universities aren’t about to change their ways anytime soon.

    This debate isn’t new, nor are the predictions of the end of academia as we now it: I mentioned Illich before, who thought in the early 70s that institutionalized learning was on its last legs. This after the exuberance of the 60s, free universities, students setting their own learning agenda, the power of mimeo and the underground press…

    I have more optimistic days, but this is a pessimistic one.

  2. Brian says:

    The case of Drezner is discouraging — in part because it is next to impossible to know how his weblogging played into being rejected — if his case was an instance of Ivan Tribble (Chronicle of Higher Education’s infamous “Bloggers Need Not Apply”) logic, or something else.

    Downes just chimed in on this: “If the tenure committee had some misconceptions or some prejudices about blogging – or, for that matter, any other activity – then it would make a lot more sense to get these out into the open to be addressed, either by the applicant, through modified behaviour, or by the committee, though modified judgement. Depending instead on rumour and hearsay seems, well, such a non-academic way to go.” (http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=31642)

  3. Alan says:

    How big does the canyon need to be that divides how universities operate from what the rest of the world does before unis are left as isolated sky islands poplulated by bizarrely mutated specialized species? Still, I doubt much seismic change in my life time.

    I do like Todd’s call to arms, even if I am among the choir. Let;s hear it for iTivotization of Everything!

  4. Brian says:

    “How big does the canyon need to be that divides how universities operate from what the rest of the world does before unis are left as isolated sky islands poplulated by bizarrely mutated specialized species?”

    Hey! Gulliver’s Travels, Book 3!

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