Will the twin trends of open source and wiki have a transformational effect on learning content and, consequently, on universities? This piece from 2011 appeared before the widespread emergence of MOOC providers in 2012 —“the year of the MOOC”—as noted by the New York Times.

First published in The Australian.
Access on QUT eprints.

Open source content will turn campuses into cohort learning spaces.

When market analyst Phil Ruthven recently addressed the Universities Australia Conference about challenges facing the higher education sector, he spoke about lazy balance sheets, growth of for-profit providers, the need for greater productivity gains, and the transformative role of technology and social media.

But it is unclear how the latter will play out for leading universities with brands largely derived from research intensity and student selectivity, and for which mass participation, at least for now, is not a priority.

Will the twin trends of open source and wiki have a transformational effect on learning content and, consequently, on these universities?

Open source has its beginnings in software development, but its ideas are being increasingly applied to content. Wiki software promotes the distribution of collaboratively created content, and its growing popularity indicates that this trend will only continue to increase over time.

Initiatives in the education space that embody one or both of these trends include the Connexions Project at Rice University, the MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Education Resource initiative, and the Wikimedia Foundation project, Wikiversity, as well as video lectures on YouTube and iTunes U.

If the trajectory of open source is any guide, these initiatives could organise into a global open repository of continuously improving learning material, and lecture videos with real-time quality and reputation ratings. And, if the software sector can serve as any guide, the quality of this content has the potential to be superior to content produced by most universities, not to mention individual academics. So, what are the consequences of such a scenario?

First, there is potential for productivity gains as academics adopt much of this material, and second, the opportunity for students to benefit from high-quality content that comes recommended by their peers. However, if much of the learning content is freely available, then how does a university differentiate itself, let alone justify the high cost of enrolment?

While it will still take effort to customise such material, and universities will continue to produce specialised content in their areas of strength, it is likely the substance of even the most specialised of material which will, over time, become a part of open content.

The differentiating propositions for universities will continue to be what they have always been: a degree from a good brand, high levels of pastoral care, and a student cohort with the promise of membership in influential social and professional networks.

Following this trajectory, the focus will likely begin to shift to cohort-based learning. Such sessions are demanding of the student and the teacher, but their centrality to the learning process should ensure that universities assign these sessions to their best academics. Ironically, student-staff ratios may have to decrease, which runs counter to the productivity promise of technology.

So, if there are productivity gains, they will have to come from the effectiveness of learning outcomes. Why should a cohort of 20 students at a highly selective university need the same four years to complete a Bachelor of Engineering degree as a cohort of 20 students at a less selective university, or another cohort of 20 students at the same university juggling a different work-study balance?

It is not too difficult to imagine that once universities are unshackled from the straitjacket of scheduling lectures at fixed times, and their focus moves to education in small groups, that the resulting flexibility will not only lead to better outcomes for students, but may also result in better use of resources.

There are already signs of movement in this direction: student attendance at lectures is declining and there is much experimentation in learning communities and group learning. Once cohort-based learning is centre-stage, we are likely to see an increase in innovation aimed at replicating some of the ingredients of a residential college that facilitates interaction at all waking hours. After all, social media is tailor-made for such innovation.

So, why do we still not have a wiki university?

The real architects of this unfolding revolution are the students born in the 1990s, who have not known a world without the internet. Things will start to come full-circle once they begin arriving as academics on our campuses.