Educause 2014

Executive Summary:

Educause was held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL, September 29th — October 2nd. There were over 3500 attendees, 300 sessions and more than 500 speakers — 60+ webcasts and 18 exclusive online sessions provided virtually — the conference convened some of the brightest minds in the community.

Tuesday, September 30
General Session; Clay Christensen:

Decentralization is disruptive and is hard to catch. “stupid management hypothesis” to explain failure.

Competing against non-consumption business model. Make a product that is better than nothing will lead to greater success. Example of non-consumption of art, digital frame.

Worried about bubbles, capital market myopia, you don’t realize there are others playing in the same game and when that happens the bubble will burst.

Another plea for non-consumption, example of the Tesla and electric cars. Theory of disruption and will electric cars disrupt gasoline cars. Disruption emits very little data it happens gradually. Theory of disruption says Look at the bottom and as it builds momentum this is something to watch.

Face to face education is strong on quality and cannot be emulated online. That said…

The Hands of Capitalism:
The structure of HE will change. Adam Smiths Invisible Hand concept, will go after where there’s money and go after areas where’s there’s no money.

Alfred Chandlers Visible Hand of managerial capitalism. Need to have people who can make decisions about what should happen.
What do you want
How do we measure what we want
No unanticipated interdependencies.

Historically HE followed the Visible hand approach.
Future of HE will be leaning toward the Invisible Hand. Modularity will become the standard for HE.

The right product architecture depends upon the basis of competition. Example of the palm pilot and hand held devices. Blackberry’s strong hold on the market and the entrance of Apple iPhone and the use of apps to allow products to plug-In. Android OS brought even more modularity to the world. Android accounts for nearly 90% of the market.
Glimpse the future of the iPhone by comparing to IBM’s pcs which lost to Apple due to proprietary nature of Apple’s architecture. Modularity strips away differentiation across products.

People who provide the modules are the ones who make the money. . Fast is how you succeed not by being innovative.

Law of conservation of modularity; alternate layers of proprietary/modularity/proprietary/modularity.
The move towards certification versus degrees requires standards to be put in place and provides for a modular architecture. Students will be able to cobble together their skill set.
Outsourcing often sets in motion disruptive business model liquidation.
Example of Dell and Asus Tek. Started with simple circuit boards and expanded to the motherboard. This followed another value proposition of assembling the units. This increased Dells profitability. However it also increased revenue and profitability for Asus Tek. Little by little Asus Tek took over Dell’s market space and share.

University of Phoenix example and the 135k business students vs Harvard’s 900.

Experience economy.

Session2:
Woman in IT Constituent Group
Beth Schaefer, Deborah Keyek-Franssen (Colorado System).
Topics:
-increasing the visibility of women in IT
-unconscious bias and micro-inequities in the workplace.
Ncwit.org. Resources
Siteither.org
Emma Watson speach to UN.

Wednesday October 1:
Session 1
Learner Centric: The New Normal. Katie Blott,Blackboard SVP, Blackboard

Review of Chronicle of HE surveys wrt educational issues and quality of experience and outcomes.
Changes need to be centered around the learner of today.

Catalyst for Change
Today’s student are acting as consumers.
Listening to their peers and networked learning.
Students do not like university websites but prefer apps to go directly to the desired function. Learners want to know data about themselves and their classmates. Looking to be successful

New Student Journeys
Changes in learner pathways: “post-traditional” learners. No longer a linear pathway to degrees. “Swirling students”. Downside translates to increased dropout rates. Movement to non-linear pathways

The New Normal
Anytime anywhere
Flexible
Personal
Engaging
Affordable
Accessible

How does all this translate to the changes we need to make?

Learned Centric
Rethink learning delivery and driving student outcomes (see pic)
And the business of education

The Future, better with.
Need to get better informed regarding competency based education CBEs

Program selection and marketing.
Student support services distributed model. Providing everywhere the students are.
Career placement improvements

New user experience
Collaborate-new improved “Apollo”
New grading app for faculty
Job Genie see pic
Data and decision making
Spoke with Katie about coming to campus to provide overview for our faculty. Will be in touch.

SLR Mentoring with Linda Jorn: William Bridges, Managing Transitions. 3-stages; let go/neutral/re-visioning.

SLR breakfast:
Jim Collins Leadership skills; Good to Great
Nancy Zimpher leadership theory:

Five way theory of leadership
Vision, at the hands of many
Strategic Actions
Accountability
Resources
Storytellers

Thinking strategically “admiring the problem”. Layout your thinking graphically. Limit pptx slides to 10 slides or less. PechaKusha presentations.

Expectations for IT organization. Role-alike groups. CIO is instrumental at enabling the core of our missions. Counting on IT to be the drivers. Do NOT become vulcanized.

Tips on telling the story of IT. Brand redo is important, a deep dive in what you’re trying to tell people. Being able to extend the brand. Aligning across the organization. Graphic representation of our ideas. IT is not the story, focus on the goals not the tools. Tell the story in a way that drives the initiatives. A big part of telling the story is financial. Design is an important aspect to storytelling.

General Session
Thursday, October 2nd
Nancy Zimpher:
New responsibilities for post-secondary Educause in the 21st century.

Tom Friedman, favorite columnist. The world is flat.
Vivek Wadwha: stay in school!
David Leonhardt, NY Times. The critically of education for improving society.

A culture of discipline is not a principle of business. It is a principle of greatness. Jim Collins

Frank Bruni: acknowledges the balancing act of HE

A+C=S Access + Completion = Success
SUNYs digital DNA
Open SUNY +
Applied Learning

Higher Ed and Systemness
Stanford social innovation: channeling change making Collective Impact work.
Collaborative Action
Coordinated Action
Individual Action
Flex Space