Tempering the Rise of the Machines [View all]

[FarCenter]

Online education has enabled many colleges to transition into the prevailing modern medium while adding new sources of revenue in times of scarcity, according to the Ithaka report. However, these innovative colleges have shown less interest in using the novel medium to curb tuition charges and measure learning outcomes.

The report, called "Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education," was co-written by Lawrence S. Bacow and William G. Bowen, the former presidents of Tufts and Princeton Universities, respectively, along with several Ithaka analysts. It was bankrolled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The report contained little advocacy one way or another; rather, the authors appeared to strive for a dispassionate analysis driven by a general sense that the rise of machine learning is inevitable and universities should be prepared. Their findings were based on interviews with senior administrators at 25 public and private, four-year and two-year colleges, including “deep dive” analyses at five of them.

Their objective was to assess the potential roadblocks that might prevent these traditional institutions from adopting sophisticated, “machine guided” learning tools into their curriculums. Technology designed to usher students through new material is thought likely to play a significant role in the future of higher education, although critics have worried that relying too heavily on such technology could harm learning.

In 2009, a team of machine-learning researchers for Carnegie Mellon University’s Online Learning Initiative tested autonomous software that taught a statistics course twice as efficiently as a human lecturer. Companies such as Pearson and Knewton have developed tutoring software that senses weaknesses in the students’ understanding and adapts to their needs. Engineers at Khan Academy, the free learning website, have built similarly adaptive tools into the companion exercises for Khan’s popular video tutorials. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it wants to develop virtual electrical engineering laboratories where students -- hundreds of thousands at a time -- can experiment with circuits.


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/01/report-barriers-rise-artificially-intelligent-tutors-traditional-universities

Based on the experience of other industries, it is unlikely that higher education will gracefully adopt online learning systems. Instead, there will be resistance and backlash. The result will be that adoption will be accompanied by a lot of churn, with both institutions and personnel being replaced along with the instructional techniques.