Innovating the 21st-Century University: It's Time!

Abstract

Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge--both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people--and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education. The transformation of the university is not just a good idea. It is an imperative, and evidence is mounting that the consequences of further delay may be dire. Change is required in two vast and interwoven domains that permeate the deep structures and operating model of the university: (1) the value created for the main customers of the university (the students); and (2) the model of production for how that value is created. First universities need to toss out the old industrial model of pedagogy (how learning is accomplished) and replace it with a new model called collaborative learning. Second they need an entirely new "modus operandi" for how the subject matter, course materials, texts, written and spoken word, and other media (the content of higher education) are created. The authors believe that if the university opens up and embraces "collaborative learning" and "collaborative knowledge production," it has a chance of surviving and even thriving in the networked, global economy. They call for the launching of a "Global Network for Higher Learning," consisting of the following five stages or levels: (1) course content exchange; (2) course content collaboration; (3) course content co-innovation; (4) knowledge co-creation; and (5) collaborative learning connection. (Contains 23 notes.)