Keynote presentation given to the Melbourne Personal Learning Environments on 11 July 2013 at Monash University, Clayton campus.

1. PERSONAL LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS, THE
COURSE AND HIGHER
EDUCATION – AN
UNKEYNOTE
Mark Smithers (@marksmithers)

2. PROVOCATEUR
The views presented here are mine
and do not represent the views of
my employer.
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3. INTRODUCTION

5. WHAT I’LL BE TALKING ABOUT

6. DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS
It’s been interesting watching this unfold
in music, books, newspapers, TV, but
nothing has ever been as interesting to
me as watching it happen in my own
backyard. Higher education is now being
disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open
online course (or MOOC), and our
Napster is Udacity, the education startup.

7. FORECASTING THE DEMISE OF THE
UNIVERSITY
"Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional
campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning
is coming on fast.“
- Peter Drucker, Forbes magazine 1997

9. DEFINING DI
Christensen describes disruptive innovation as:
“Generally, disruptive innovations were
technologically straightforward, consisting of off-
the-shelf components put together in a product
architecture that was often simpler than prior
approaches. They offered less of what customers in
established markets wanted and so could rarely be
initially employed there. They offered a different
package of attributes valued only in emerging
markets remote from, and unimportant to, the
mainstream”

10. “Disruptive technologies bring to market a very
different value proposition than had been available
previously. Generally, disruptive technologies
underperform established products in mainstream
markets. But they have features that a few fringe
(and generally new) customers value. Products
based on disruptive technologies are typically
cheaper, simpler, smaller and, frequently, more
convenient to use”
DEFINING DI

11. THE DISRUPTIVE
INNOVATION
DIAGRAM

12. WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN
COMMON?

13. WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN
COMMON?

14. THIEL FELLOWSHIP

15. I HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS
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16. QUESTION – BE HONEST NOW
• Are you employed in a role in which you have no formal qualifications?
What is it?
• What do you think you are really good at or know a lot about but for which
you have no formal qualifications? Could you be employed in a role using
your unqualified skills and/or knowledge?
• Are these things you learnt by doing a course? Or are they things that you
learnt by yourself in an informal, ad-hoc way? Or something else?
• Let’s spend 5 minutes discussing and then see what capabilities we have in
the room.

18. SOCIAL PROFESSIONAL REPUTATION

22. QUESTION – ON THE
QUALIFICATION
• Should it be possible for people to achieve a qualification evidencing their
learning and/or skills without completing a course?
• If it is possible then will it be important that people are able to do this?
• What will the effect be on the role of the course as it exists today if people
can evidence their own learning without completing a course?
• Let’s spend 5 minutes thinking and sharing.

24. MAKING YOUR OWN LEARNING
VISIBLE

25. QUESTION – ON THE MAKER
CULTURE
• What happens when the barriers to the production of engaging content fall
so low that anyone can create content?
• What does it mean when the students can produce learning content?
• What about when other people can create open content? What does it
mean for the role of the academic as subject matter expert?

27. QUESTION – ON THE SHARING
CULTURE
• What happens when content is shared openly and is built communally?
• What happens when learners engage with each other on their own in ways
not mediated by the subject matter expert?

32. QUESTION – ON ACCESS TO
KNOWLEDGE

33. OPEN BADGES

34. QUESTION – ON CREDENTIALING
• Do we need credentialing?
• What are we measuring?
• What is the role of the wider community in credentialing?
• How will we credential?
• Do degrees still have a place?
• What will be the role of professional organisations?

35. THE OBLIGATORY
MOOC SLIDE

36. QUESTION – WHAT WILL COURSES
LOOK LIKE?
• Will they look the same?
• Will they be time and place dependent?
• Will there be instances of courses that occur between fixed intervals?
• When will we enrol in courses?
• Will courses resemble communities of practice?
• How will personal learning environments interact with course learning environments?
• Who will build courses?
• Who will run courses?
• Spend 5 to 10 minutes talking about how courses may look in 20 years time.

37. Traditional Higher Degree SPOC xMOOC cMOOC Professional
Development
Training
Community
Course
Informal, ad-
hoc open
Online No Partly Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Mostly
Open No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Directed Yes Yes Yes Yes Partly Yes No No
Structured Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Time based Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Fixed
outcome
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Topic
focussed
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Personal Very low Low Low Low High High Very High Very High
Social Very low Low Low Low High Low High High
School/ early
tertiary
education
Small, Private
Online Courses COURSES

38. QUESTION – WHAT WILL TERTIARY
INSTITUTIONS LOOK LIKE?
• How will universities, colleges and further education providers look in the
future?
• Smaller? Larger? More specialised? More general?
• Virtual? Bricks and mortar?
• Spend 5 minutes thinking about what your institution might be like in 20 years
time.

39. WHAT DOES A UNIVERSITY
DO NOW?
The three purposes of the University? – To
provide sex for the students, sports for the
alumni, and parking for the faculty.
I have sometimes thought of it [the
university] as a series of individual faculty
entrepreneurs held together by a common
grievance over parking.
- Clark Kerr

40. WHAT WILL HIGHER EDUCATION
DO?

41. ADAPT
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42. RETREAT

43. SPECIALISE
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44. FAMOUS SCHOOLS

45. QUESTION - WHAT ABOUT THE ROLE OF
THE ACADEMIC?
• Do you think that the role of the academic will change?
• Will we still have the notion of academic and non academic?
• How do personal learning environments change the nature of the
academy?
• Spend 5 minutes at your table?

46. DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS
In the academy, we lecture other people
every day about learning from history. Now its
our turn, and the risk is that we’ll be the last to
know that the world has changed, because
we can’t imagine - really cannot imagine -
that story we tell ourselves about ourselves
could start to fail. Even when it’s true.
Especially when it’s true.
- Clay Shirky, 2012

47. CAN THE UNIVERSITY CHANGE?

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50. SUMMARY – WHY I’M AN
OUTRAGEOUS OPTIMIST
Future is more social, more flexible, more personal but…
… we’ll still have courses, there will just be a wider range of types of courses.
And they will be better than they are now.

51. HOW MIGHT IT ALL FIT TOGETHER?