Universities will be 'irrelevant' by 2020, BYU professor says

[CreekDog]

By Elaine Jarvik

Deseret News

Published: Monday, April 20, 2009 11:04 p.m. MDT

(David Wiley is a professor of psychology and instructional technology at Brigham Young University.)

PROVO — "Your institutions (colleges and universities) will be irrelevant by 2020."

...(Wiley) preaches about a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free.
...
Many of today's students, he says, aren't satisfied with the old model that expects them to go to a lecture hall at a prescribed time and sit still while a professor talks for an hour.
...
Wiley points to a YouTube video called "What if." The video quotes educators from years gone by who were alarmed that chalk, pencils, ballpoint pens and calculators would make students lazy and stupid.

Wiley is an amiable firebrand who helped launch the nation's "open content" movement a decade ago while he was getting his Ph.D. at BYU. Like the "open source" software movement that preceded it, open content makes it easy for authors, teachers and others to sign licensing agreements to freely share their copyrighted materials.
...
Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30.
...
When he taught at Utah State University, Wiley became famous in higher-ed circles for letting anyone sign up for his class. Unlike typical online classes, this one required no tuition and no password, and Wiley interacted with all his students, even the ones in Italy.
...
At many Utah universities, Wiley says, there are professors who record their lectures and download them onto iTunes, and there are professors who have been delivering the exact same lecture for the past 20 years.
...
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/705298649/Universities-will-be-irrelevant-by-2020-Y-professor-says.html

[angstlessk]

1. aren't we supposed to have flying cars right about now???

[Flying Dream Blues]

3. or at least a jetpack. I am also waiting for Rosie the Robot to take charge of my house. nt

[JHB]

16. The sad part is, the only Jetsons gag that's come true so far is...

...work injuries from pressing buttons all day (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, anyone?)

[Flying Dream Blues]

17. So true...I think they called it "push-button-itis" IIRC!

[izquierdista]

2. I think his timing is off

After all, the invention of the printing press was supposed to have made sitting in a lecture hall, copying what the lecturer was reading obsolete. There will always be a need for interaction between teacher and student, but what modern technology is accomplishing is to make it easier to individualize that interaction.

[Xithras]

4. Would you let someone operate on your brain after watching a how-to video on YouTube?

Our societal and employment models set minimum requirements that people must achieve before calling themselves qualified for most skilled positions. Most typically, that minimum skillset is assured by the presence of a degree, and that degree is achieved by successfully completing a predefined set of courses.

So long as we require degrees to get jobs, we'll have universities. Since I don't see hospitals hiring self-educated surgeons or corporations hiring self-educated accountants any time soon, I won't hold my breath on the demise of the university.

It's true that technology is changing the model used to convey information to students, but at the end of the day we will still need a way to assure that the information was learned and incorporated into their skillset.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. You missed the point...no one said anything about doing away with exams or certifications

And clearly a number of courses require hands on in meat space.

I would guess that 60 percent or more college courses can be done well online. My youngest daughter took a number of her general ed courses that way, sometimes from our home state while attending private university and had the units transfer.

The promise of this is that students anywhere in the world can interact with some of the most gifted instructors in their fields. That is a tremendous opportunity. Open course ware is a major step forward as well

[Xithras]

13. As a college prof who's taught online, I disagree.

Online courses require a higher level of self-motivation and personal discipline from students, and almost universally have a higher drop rate than conventional courses. This problem is especially acute in the hard sciences and mathematics, where some lower level online mathematics classes see drop/failure rates pushing 80%.

The reason behind the disparate outcomes is simple. Online courses may be convenient, but they generally reduce a students access to instructors and limit feedback. An instructor giving a physics lecture will generally stop periodically, ask his students whether they are following along, and answer any questions they may have. A student who is REALLY lost can raise their hand, stop the instructor, and ask for clarification. That kind of instant feedback doesn't exist in the online world, where a student may be watching an online lecture that was recorded six months previously. That student may send an email with a question (far more time consuming), but will generally have to wait hours (or days, if on a weekend) for a response back. That kind of feedback situation is far from ideal, and creates a situation where students who "get it the first time" excel, while students who need help are far more likely to fail out.

[XemaSab]

11. Word

You still need accreditation, and exams to be held offline in a classroom.

FWIW, I have always been much better at getting information from a lecture than from a textbook.

[cloudbase]

5. They're well on the way to pricing themselves

out of existance.

[anonymous171]

14. Yep. nt

[bemildred]

19. Yep, and you don't get what you paid for either. nt

[shadowknows69]

7. In other news: brewers of cheap beer facing imminent bankruptcy in 2021

[tammywammy]

8. LOL! n/t

[QC]

9. Well, BYU has certainly gotten off to a head start on the march to irrelevance. n/t

[bridgit]

10. No Doubt, let BYU take the first step...$30 for a paperback, pft, for $30...

I want that paperback to read itself to me

[arbusto_baboso]

15. Oh, BYU finished that march awhile ago.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. David Wiley - aka Wiley Coyote - is sure the one to tell us about lots of things .....

.... like how to catch a Road Runner.



(Thanks John! I got to steal *that* one pretty fast!)

[Iris]

18. How will they be irrelevant? If anything, they will be ubiquitous. Podcast content doesn't create

itself.

[MadHound]

20. And we're supposed to do chem labs and dissections in our kitchen?

That would go over real well.

Sorry, but this professor is an idiot, and besides neglecting to tell us how students will get the hands on experiences that many degrees require, he also neglects to take into account the fact that the college experience is far more than what takes place in the lecture hall.