One Future for Online Learning

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Leah Belsky, Senior Vice President at Coursera, sketches a future for online learning that includes institutions of higher education at the center of a global shared learning ecosystem. This ecosystem would involve university partnerships and collaborations both among themselves and with employers eager to create a workforce with the talent to drive progress.

It would require universities to embrace technology at a much more substantial level than we have seen thus far, and it would require the sharing of courses and other resources to meet the needs of a knowledge-based economy. It would require greater flexibility in programs with stackable and mobile friendly learning experiences made widely available. The learning ecosystem envisioned would involve the adoption of AI driven adaptive learning systems to make personalized learning experiences available to a global population of learners.

As intriguing as the prospects set forth by Belsky may be, her vision raises the question of whether traditional higher education has the will, the experience, or the talent to seize the opportunities she poses. With most colleges and universities having a campus-based local or regional focus and with the most elite institutions building reputations on limiting enrollment, there are some serious hurdles to be overcome to embrace a shared learning ecosystem. Moreover, with public institutions restricted by the governments that support them and private institutions held back by alumni and faculty expectations, it is difficult to see where leaders of institutions of higher education will have the latitude to take the dramatic moves that will be necessary to play a substantial role in creating a global learning ecology.

It seems more likely that institutions of higher education might be able to play a major role as centers of research supporting the global learning ecosystem than as direct sources of educational services. Much of the technological underpinnings of a global system were hatched in universities and university researchers already have experience with multi-institutional research collaborations. Engaging the research capabilities of higher education would not bring disapproval from any of the major constituencies in the sector.