What to Make of All the Rapid Innovations in Higher Education?
I was a panel participant at a conference last Thursday in Washington, DC. The conference was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and was called Stretching the Higher Education Dollar. The five panels that were convened included: The Case for Reform, Opportunities and Obstacles at Existing Institutions, Unbundling College Degrees in Theory and Practice, College in Pieces: Cost Effective Approaches to Student Services and Credentialing, and Implications for State and Federal Policy.
The Innovative University
When I read Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, I enjoyed Clayton Christensen and his co-authors’ application of the potential of disruptive innovations to the K-12 classroom. As a result, I looked forward to reading his new book, The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out.
Digital Natives
I had planned to followup my article about Apple with an article about the differences between my generation of computer users and my children’s generation. The impetus for my original plan was watching my eight year old daughters search Google the other morning for the term “cute baby animal pictures.” When I saw that Google was able to synthesize that request and deliver links to some very cute baby animals, I thought about the term Digital Native which I had first heard a few years ago from West Virginia’s First Lady, Gayle Manchin.