Anyway, I was out walking my dog today when suddenly I had this great insight that will solve two or your biggest problems. I knew you’d want to hear all about it.

You’ve got a really nasty unemployment problem. True? You betcha. And you’ve got another even nastier mismatch because the skills needed tomorrow are not always the ones available today. Also true? Check.

But put the two problems together and they disappear! Pay people to teach what they know and love. Let people learn for free. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You’ll have both a massive jobs program and a massive skills program rolled into one. How sweet is that?

Oh, sure, there are a few details to work out. But I thought you’d want to know right away.

Best wishes for 2010. And blessings to all throughout the world.
Gary

Something has nagged at me now for about 6 months. It is similar to the gut feeling I can get while programming. It concerns the innovative edge of learning research and development. Not that I know elearning particularly well, because clearly I do not, but in this post I try to express an unease. Perhaps it is unfounded. You be the judge.

The tug happens like this … “Whoa, exactly who are these learners we’re talking about here? Do they include the unserved, for whom the classrooms and pedagogy we sometimes disparage are only a distant dream on a path toward freedom and mobility?”

Don’t misunderstand. Elearning R&D is necessary, important, and holds vast potential for the public good.

Having said that, however, more room exists for simple approaches that use low-hanging fruit, can occur nearly immediately, and which would benefit many.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Note it is not a proposal. It is simply an example used to illustrate a point. And very likely it is not novel; surely others have already pushed the idea forward and I’m just not aware of it. But  here goes.

It is a tautology to say that the web is the greatest learning resource the world has ever known. Even if we restricted ourselves to existing “formalesque” tutorials and courses that are free, the web offers an immense variety. For learners the problem is one of locating these tutorials and judging their quality and suitability.

A simple approach might start with a way for learners to identify, comment about, and rate web tutorials they’ve taken. Kind of like an Amazon for web tutorials instead of books.

Would that help? Yes, I think it might. It is a place to begin. Austere perhaps but nonetheless a start. From there? Who can tell. Domain specific sites around areas or topics of interest (eg, chemistry tutorials)? Possibilities for learners taking the same tutorial to work together? Trails to guide learners through sequences of tutorials? Mentors (eg, other learners) to provide support? Multiple voices represented in diverse trails covering similar terrain? Mechanisms (eg, portfolios) to portray learning history? Learning centers coalescing? Expressions of learning in a currency that employers understand?

The paths seem endless but hopeful.

Simple and free. It’s a good beginning.

There’s nothing at the site yet. And there won’t be for a [very?] long time. So hold your horses.

Why the announcement? A couple reasons. One, I want to make it more difficult for myself to ignore the site. And, two, it’s a small step toward the ideas I wrote about here, here, here, and here.

In all honesty, I have no idea where things will go with this. I have some vague hopes of designing and developing something [a web db?] that can then be open-sourced, improved upon, and enlivened with the new ideas of others.

My belief is that everyone everywhere has the right to learn. My hope is that someday learning will be free throughout each person’s lifetime.

It is such an implausible hope that I still get embarrassed saying it, although it’s getting easier. And when I remember the inimitable question of Richard Feynman, “what do you care what other people think?” it brings a smile.

The economic stimulus bill now being considered in Congress must look like manna from heaven to colleges and universities. According to an article by Sam Dillon  in today’s New York Times, the stimulus bill would “shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.”

However, the stimulus package might easily be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Here’s a question for you. Does your strategic plan include the unthinkable, that university life as you know it may be coming to an end? Take a look around and listen to the distant rumblings that may portend trouble for higher education on the same scale as has already affected industries like music and newsprint.

Ask yourself, can my institution survive change of that magnitude? And then ask yourself, would the economic stimulus plan just further entrench my institution on an established path where change will be even more difficult? Would you be accepting a handout that just further cements your feet in place?

I could easily be wrong, of course. It may be that higher education leads a charmed existence so deeply buffered that it will be impervious to the rumblings of change. In which case, the stimulus money will be welcome.

But just for a moment, consider the possibility that you will be asked to steer your institution into troubled times that dwarf the current economic recession.

Let’s look at just one of the rumblings. In yesterday’s The Wired Campus of the Chronicle of Higher Education, there’s an article by Jeffrey Young that describes two new online universities that use extremely low-cost business models. Young ends his article with these words:

It seems that either University of the People, or P2PU, or some yet-to-be-created institution, will find a way to offer a radically cheaper college degree using online tools. The new models will probably take some time to mature until the right mix of teaching and self-study is perfected.

In the comments to Young’s article, there’s a revealing look into what some of your faculty (particularly your adjuncts) may be feeling. Joe Erwin asks:

Why are we who are highly qualified to provide educational services not being the entrepreneurs in all this? We could “cut out the middle man” (expensive physical campuses and expensive administrators) and enable motivated students to pay us more directly for our services. How essential are all the “overhead” aspects?

If you weren’t already concerned about the viability of today’s form of higher education, it’s time to be afraid. Perhaps very afraid.

In the course of being afraid, you’ll want to ask yourself if manna from heaven is worth the price.

I say this as a friend of higher education, a third-generation academic who has loved university life but now thinks it needs to change.

It’s the morning after nearly 3 days of continuous snow. The day dawned golden in the tops of the red pines, and the play of shadows now spills across the contours of drifts. It’s a perfect time to give breath to an idea that’s been kicking around inside my head for months.

Suppose a data system existed and was available via an API as a web service to foster the entrepreneurial innovation needed to transform education and learning.

What we need now are more people who will build new products, services, and organizations. We need the chaos and tumult of new markets around learning. Only then will viable alternatives evolve and adapt.

My own belief is that learning should be free (as in gratis) for everyone throughout life (see Imagining Tomorrow’s University). Talking about it and writing about it are fine, but for free learning to actually happen people need to build it. And the same is true for every other innovative idea. Research & development, conference presentations, scholarly articles, blogging, and twittering may all be necessary but they’re not sufficient conditions for systemic change. We need to take things beyond incubation and let them thrive or wither in markets. My idea for free learning may be naive and impossible, as most of my friends signal with blank stares, but I think it would be incredibly hopeful for the future if this idea and thousands of others had a go at making a difference.

So the thought behind the web service is to avoid betting on winners or losers, but rather to make it easier for any learning entrepreneur to sandbox his or her ideas. Let’s support the underpaid itinerant adjunct lecturer who would like to open her own learning center. Let’s support the student disaffected with traditional learning who wants to explore and learn on his own. Let’s support the stay-at-home parents who have a little extra time and the talent to mentor learners. Let’s support the people who would like to create a project-based learning community around a topic of common interest. Let’s support the educational designers who want to customize individual learning paths for people. And let’s support the dreamers … who want to craft more meaningful tokens of certification than represented today by degrees; or who want to make transparent the information people need to make better decisions about their learning; or who believe learning should be indistinguishable from life; or who see other futures entirely.

Of course this avoids one minor detail. Could any web service(s) foment this kind of innovative activity?

I’d welcome your thoughts, particularly if they’re strong and negative.

Stephen spoke about Free Learning. The slides and audio make for an engaging, thought-provoking hour. Below are my comments addressed to Stephen.

My reaction concerns the meaning of free learning.

Free content is part of free learning. No problems there. But free learning means more than that. Suppose you created a learning community (however you want to define that). The content’s free, of course. But what, if anything, would a learner in your community need to pay? If the answer is zero, then how would you pull that off (who does pay and for what)? If the answer is not zero, then what would you charge a learner for?

Given the nature of the conference, I understand why you limited your discussion of free learning to free content. But without answers to the questions above, free learning remains a chimera.