As the authors made clear, we are just in the early stages of this process. But the pace of the process will likely quicken as the increases in cost and tuition at colleges and universities continue unchecked--and as the greater demands of America's public, economy, and government policies continue unmet. But no one yet appears able to see just how it will all unfold, the timing, or exactly what it all will look like when all the change has had its way. Still, if you sense authority or prescience in this article by Christensen and Horn, then expect to see these kinds of changes occur more visibly and at an increasing rate, as we also see an increasingly troubled and failing traditional higher education model.
---See my “Disruptive Innovation: Re-Shaping American Higher Education?” Hyde Park’s Corner (7.2.2011)
In less than two years, we can see that the pace of the process has quickened, that serious players are now engaging that process, and that progress is being made. And interestingly, it is not the business or for-profit sector that is leading in innovation (although they are playing their role). It is elite American Universities that have taken up the gauntlet, accepting the challenge to lead and protect their higher education franchise as it moves into a new era of dramatic change. It includes the Harvard-MIT joint venture, EdX, Coursera and Udacity, among others. The new thing in on-line higher education are “MOOCs”, the mass, open, on-line courses. And they are free, at least in this early experimental phase. Then, as Professor Christensen suggests, the next new thing may be what he calls “just-in-time mini-courses.”
But first, let’s listen as Drew Faust, President of Harvard University, shares some of her thoughts on progress made, likely applications, and how it will change even the elite, traditional residential colleges like Harvard. Ms. Faust:
In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I participated in a panel discussion on MOOCs—massive open online courses—and the future of education. Massachusetts Institute of Technology President L. Rafael Reif and I had the opportunity to share our thoughts on edX, the nonprofit organization created by Harvard and MIT to make high-quality [free] educational content and courses available online. EdX will enhance our understanding of learning and teaching on our campuses at the same time it brings knowledge to individuals across the globe.
Nearly 200,000 people, half of them from outside of the United States, enrolled in the initial edX courses taught by Harvard faculty this fall—Introduction to Computer Science I and Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research. I expect to see even larger enrollments in the next slate of Harvard offerings, which includes an introduction to moral and political philosophy, an examination of global environmental change, and an exploration of the law of copyright. In The Ancient Greek Hero, the platform’s first humanities course, students will encounter the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey—and related art, film, and music—throughout time and across space, considering enduring characters and questions in an entirely new context. These courses are not lectures delivered through the web, but active learning experiences where students are asked to demonstrate understanding and connect with others to form participant communities.
Increasing access and making knowledge from diverse fields and disciplines much more broadly available are important aims, but there are other motivations for launching edX. We intend to leverage observations made in the digital space to understand what we might do better in our own classrooms and classrooms around the world—an aspiration that is already being realized...Higher education will continue to be advanced by digital innovations. The edX partnership is an opportunity for Harvard and MIT, together with a host of partner colleges and universities, to encourage new approaches, to develop new methods, and to drive assessment—all pursued in a spirit of boundless curiosity and an abiding openness to the wider world.
MOOCs and their potential captured considerable attention at Davos as business and political leaders speculated about the future of residential education, a conversation that will continue in the months and years ahead. I believe that online education offers us possibilities we have just begun to imagine for sharing knowledge more widely and teaching more effectively. But the power of residential education and interaction will not be undermined. Bringing thinkers and doers together is uniquely generative. Every day the magic that happens inside a Farkas or Paine Hall rehearsal room; across an i-lab whiteboard or a House dining room table; in a Law School classroom or a stem cell laboratory or dozens of other settings across our campus reminds us of the uplifting and transformative power of the company we are so lucky to keep.
---“The Future Of Education” by Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine (March-April 2013)
It is clear, then, that President Faust sees a strong future for elite residential colleges and universities, places like Harvard and its peers, places with large endowments and considerable resources. She sees Harvard’s joint venture with MIT and the other peer initiatives evolving the residential college experience into a better, more effective educational experience, and likely one that is operated on a more cost-effective basis. But their future and fate may dictate a very different model for the elite universities as well. Regardless, for the great majority of residential colleges with resources that do not run nearly so deep, financial struggles will likely follow soon enough; and unable to muster innovative ideas or new resources, they are unlikely to survive this change process without moving to an on-line or hybrid model, too.
But President Faust does not speak of the real crisis in higher education: evidence mounts that without scholarship grants, fewer and fewer poor and middle-class students will be able to afford a residential college education. Nonresidential, on-line degree and training programs will likely provide the educational life boat these students and their families need. And it appears from the pace of progress, it will likely provide a competent, cost-effective education, one that meets the needs of students and families, businesses and government, the individual and collective calls to creativity, innovation, and productivity.
How good have on-line courses already become? I read of an experiment at an elite university where one-half the students were assigned to a typical, residential classroom; the other students took the class on-line. I’m sure you’ve already guessed the result: the students taking the on-line version of the course outperformed those in the classroom. Unsurprisingly, many colleges have for some time offered courses that may be taken on-line for credit. And more and more, on-line degree programs are respected by employers as providing an effective education.
So what are Mssrs. Christensen and Horn now thinking about the progress of “disruptive innovation” in U.S. Higher education? In two related pieces in the February 2013 issue of Wired magazine, they offer some of their thoughts. The first article is a longer interview with Professor Christensen about transforming capitalism, from which I’ve extracted his comments on higher education. From that interview:
Howe: If you had to list some industries right now that are either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon, what would they be?
Christensen: Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly. Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question. And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse. But I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble.
Howe: Why is higher education vulnerable?
Christensen: The availability of online learning. It will take root in its simplest applications, then just get better and better. You know, Harvard Business School doesn’t teach accounting anymore, because there’s a guy out of BYU whose online accounting course is so good. He is extraordinary, and our accounting faculty, on average, is average.
Howe: What happens to all our institutions of advanced learning?
Christensen: Some will survive. Most will evolve hybrid models, in which universities license some courses from an online provider like Coursera but then provide more-specialized courses in person. Hybrids are actually a principle regardless of industry. If you want to use a new technology in a mainstream existing market, it has to be a hybrid. It’s like the electric car. If you want to have a viable electric car, you have to ask if there is a market where the customers want a car that won’t go far or fast. The answer is, parents of teenagers would love to put their teens in a car that won’t go far or fast. Little by little, the technology will emerge to take it on longer trips. But if you want to have this new technology employed on the California freeways right now, it has to be a hybrid like a Prius, where you take the best of the old with the best of the new.
---“Clayton Christensen wants to transform capitalism,” an interview with Clayton Christensen, Wired.com (2.12.13)
Everyone’s going MOOC-crazy these days. From frequent media coverage of online courses and platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Udemy to discussions about the complexities and business models of online education, the excitement around MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has finally “bubbled” over.
The question is not just whether MOOCs are going to disrupt traditional education, but how. Is it just about lower costs and access? Is it really going to be a Napster-like moment with entrenched “Teamsters in tweed” worried about the erosion of their research, publishing, and teaching?
This is where we can leave the realm of hype and commentary to draw on our own years of research into disruption theory. Because the curious thing about the MOOC wave of disruption is that the market leaders — not just upstarts from the edges — are the ones pioneering it. And that rarely happens.
But First: Are MOOCs Really ‘Disruptive’?
Yes, the word “disrupt” is overused. But it has a specific meaning when we’re talking about it. And MOOCs do bear the early hallmarks of a disruptive innovation:
Serves non-consumers. MOOCs are limited in the services they provide compared to traditional colleges, yet at the same time they are free and more accessible — which allows them to serve those who couldn’t otherwise access traditional higher education. Similarly, Toyota’s early cars didn’t match the reliability of Detroit’s automobiles. But they were more affordable and convenient, so the company first served people (“non-consumers”) for whom the alternative was, quite literally, nothing.
Marches upmarket. Instead of serving the same customers at the outset or competing head-on with established products, disruptive innovations improve over time to march upmarket. Eventually the quality becomes just good enough for the established customers to flock to it. It’s worth noting that the upmarket march is enabled by some key technology — such as bandwidth, video quality, online sharing tools, etc. — which is why MOOCs may now be having their moment, even though they’ve been around for years.
Redefines quality. Eventually, the disruptive innovation changes the very definition of quality in a marketplace. In the current university system, for example, most faculty are rewarded for the quality of their research — not for the quality of their teaching. But the medium and scale changes things; in the future, courses might be offered based on employer demand, not faculty research interests. MOOCs are already evolving in some ways away from traditional educational constraints: Udacity’s courses, for example, have shifted from a time-controlled to a more competency-based learning model that takes advantage of the online medium.
Does Who Is Doing the Disrupting Matter?
Given the above criteria, it’s unusual, and remarkably difficult, for established market leaders to pioneer — or even catch up — with disruptions.
Yet interestingly, the big, reputable universities are the ones leading the MOOC wave. This includes MIT and Harvard (through edX) as well as Stanford, whose groundbreaking AI course morphed into Udacity (and whose professors independently founded Coursera).
It’s not that established players can’t see the disruptions coming; they almost always do. There are just several other forces at play that cause market leaders to ignore them. For example, disruptive innovations don’t look that attractive, profitable, or prestigious early on. Or the company’s best customers signal that they don’t care for them (at least initially). But universities are likely investing in MOOCs now because disruption theory is finally widely enough understood that astute leaders know how to identify and chase opportunities early.
When established players want to (successfully) catch a disruptive wave, however, they have to set up an autonomous business model with different resources, processes, and priorities. Otherwise, the very capabilities that serve them well in their traditional business can represent liabilities in the one they’re disrupting. This is how IBM was able to go from the mainframe to personal computing business in the ’80s and ’90s, and it’s why MOOCs have done well in spinning themselves off into separate entities.
Although the big three MOOCs — Coursera, edX, and Udacity — all leverage capabilities from their “parent” universities, they still have to be careful about which ones to adopt and which ones to avoid. Ideally, they should be able to pull what they want instead of having their university parents push resources (like administrative processes) to them.
The only place the direction of this relationship doesn’t matter, according to our research, is brand. Being associated with the likes of Harvard, MIT, and Stanford doesn’t hurt, especially when it comes to signaling quality (i.e., “endorser” brands), as long as the disruptor can signal some separation for a job well done (i.e., “purpose” brands) in the new disruptive realm — hence the power of the “X” in edX. Leveraging its brand helped IBM move through multiple disruptive waves.
So What Comes Next for the MOOCs?
The need for customization will drive us toward just-in-time mini-courses.
MOOCs can be much more than marketing and edutainment. We believe they are likely to evolve into a “scale business”: one that relies on the technology and data backbone of the medium to optimize and individualize learning opportunities for millions of students.
This is very different than simply putting a video of a professor lecturing online.
The initial MOOCs came from a “process business model” where companies bring inputs together at one end and transform them into a higher-value output for customers at the other end — as with the retail and manufacturing industries.
But over time, an approach where users exchange information from each other similar to Facebook or telecommunications (a “facilitated network model”) will come to dominate online learning. This evolution is especially likely to happen if the traditional degree becomes irrelevant and, as many predict, learning becomes a continuous, on-the-job learning process. Then the need for customization will drive us toward just-in-time mini-courses.
In this case, facilitated networks or adaptive learning platforms — like Khan Academy and Knewton — may actually be better positioned than MOOCs (in their current forms) to improve learning and serve massive numbers of students with tailored offerings. Such a transformation is not unlike what happened in the car industry: The Ford Model T dominated the American car market … until General Motors brought forth choice and variety.
---“Beyond the Buzz, Where Are MOOCs Really Going?” By Michael Horn and Clayton Christensen, Wired.com (2.20.13)
Christensen appears to me right when he speaks of most traditional, residential colleges failing to perceive the strength and immediacy of the threat, how quickly the waves of their reshaping or demise are rising and lapping up against their doorsteps. And for the simple reasons cited by Christensen, most will not respond in a timely, effective way. Yet, it is impressive—isn’t it?—how some of the best of America’s higher education institutions have understood, and timely and effectively responded. There is still quite a way to go, yes, but it appears from our recent experience, and the projections of Christensen and Horn, that the distance will continue to be consumed at a faster and more efficient pace with each unit of time passed. I’m excited to consider what I may be writing about this process two years from now, even if it will likely include the continuing failings and increasing failures of more of our traditional residential colleges and universities.
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