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Kenneth C. Green
Claremont Graduate University
From Socrates' lectures in the ancient Greek Symposium to the hundreds of professors who currently use Samuelson's economics textbook in introductory economics classes at campuses across the United States, ample evidence suggests that core pedagogical practices have changed little over time. The basic instructional mode "the sage on the stage" dominates the collegiate instructional experience today much as it has for centuries.
However, over the past century a steady stream of new technologies have given hope to many both inside and outside of academe that some things just might change. For example, at the turn of the last century, Thomas Edison believed that film might supplant books as the primary resource for instruction by the end of the 1930s. Following the successful use of movies as both propaganda and training tools during the Second World War, film began to migrate into schools, particularly in science education. Television, of course, was the focus of great hopes in the late 1950s and through the 1960s. And over the past three decades, an array of educators have articulated great hopes for the potential role of computers — initially mainframes, then microcomputers in the mid eighties, and now the World Wide Web (WWW).
Indeed, in this context, the broad aspirations for the potential role of computers and information technology across all levels of education were perhaps best articulated 30 years ago by Stanford University's Patrick Suppes, an early innovator in computer-based instruction:
Both the processing and the uses of information are undergoing an unprecedented technological revolution. Not only are machines now able to deal with many kinds of information at high speed and in large quantities, but it is also possible to manipulate these quantities so as to benefit from them in new ways. This is perhaps nowhere truer than in the field of education. One can predict that in a few more years millions of schoolchildren will have access to what Philip of Macedon's son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the services of a tutor as well-informed and as responsive as Aristotle.1
Although the language may need some updating, the themes articulated in Suppes' 1967 statement—more powerful and more interactive technologies that will greatly benefit `teaching, learning, and instruction—remain current and compelling for many in and around higher education. With minor modification, Suppes' 1967 assessment would work well as the 1998 vision statement for any one of the hundreds of large conferences and small seminars on education and technology held annually in the United States and across the globe. It might also work well as the vision statement for a campus technology plan or a policy paper from a federal or state agency.
Yet significant questions remain about the potential promise and probable limits of information technology-based instruction in postsecondary education. Faculty, administrators, technical support personnel, campus trustees and state authorities, as well as corporate patrons of higher education continue to wrestle with an array of issues that cluster into questions about three key issues:
Moreover, against the backdrop of rising expectations and dynamic technologies, some significant questions remain about the potential (and appropriate) role of technology in collegiate teaching, learning, and instruction. Does the broad (or even the focused) application of information technology as content in the syllabus or in the library, and as the delivery vehicle for instruction account for a significant, cost-effective benefit in the educational experience and learning outcomes.
Finally, looming large over the current discussion, institutional planning efforts, and the broad research agenda on the role of Information Technology (IT) in instruction is the shadow of accepted (or tolerated) instructional practices that have adapted to (or survived despite) changing expectations, clientele, and mandates. Ahead for many in the campus community is a contest in which high touch("Mark Hopkins and the log"2) competes with high tech IT resources (video, television, computers, the Internet and WWW) to be teacher, tutor, testing agent, and information oracle. For some these are inherently conflicting constructs. For others, the coming integration of "high tech" resources with "high touch" instructional practices represents what many faculty and administrators view to be the best hope for revitalizing education and enhancing teaching, learning, and instruction. Still others, both in and out of higher education, view this as a battle for the soul of academe, believing that the growing use of technology reflects both the loss of faculty autonomy and encroaching corporate involvement.3
Ultimately, the assessment of the potential role of information technology in the "high touch" vs. "high tech" future of higher education depends on the way technology can serve the mission of higher education. Consequently, perhaps the best way to proceed on this adventure is to map the terrain, focusing on the instructional mission. What are the key components of the instructional mission of higher education? What issues—past, present, and future—define the parameters for the potential role of technology in higher education?
Viewed broadly, but also operationally, the instructional mission of higher education involves three primary functions: content (what is taught), context (the environment that fosters or supports instruction and learning), and certification (documenting learning outcomes and competency). (See table 1.)
Content, of course, is the most traditional of the instructional functions: classes, courses, and the curriculum expose students to new information, the structure and validity of data and information in specific disciplines and fields, methodologies linked to the generation of information, and the application of information in specific settings. Traditional assessment models focus on mastery of content: faculty routinely test students on their knowledge of accounting, chemistry, literature, and psychology.
Context reflects the instructional and experiential variables that give colleges and universities their distinctive character. Context can be defined in many ways: the time and place of the learning experience, interaction among students and faculty, and access to campus resources (e.g., libraries and computer networks) that support instruction and learning. Context also reflects the special mission of many institutions: such as technical colleges, church-affiliated institutions, and women's colleges. Indeed, decades of research about the impact of college on the student experience and student outcomes documents the critical effect of contextual variables on a range of outcome measures, including learning, intellectual and social development, and satisfaction with the college experience, as well as student retention and degree completion.4
| Content | Context | Certification |
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The third key instructional function, certification, is critical to both students and to society. The structured learning sequence reflected in a course syllabus or a degree program has a certain market value based on content (engineering vs. English, for example), assessment (grades and licensing tests), and program or institutional reputations. Absent certification, potential students might invest their time and educational dollars at Borders, Barnes & Noble, or Crown Books, rather than in college courses. (Indeed, many do!) For the moment, however, neither frequent book buyer cards nor book club memberships provide the outcome measures to test content and assess competency that are required by prospective employers: the certification function remains with colleges and other credible education providers, although not without growing challenges from other agencies and for-profit organizations.
Higher education typically has addressed these three functions concurrently: the classroom and the curriculum focus on content; the campus attempts to foster a learning environment; and the institution (or departments within an institution) certifies educational achievement, specific skills, and professional accomplishment.
Technology makes porous the boundaries that traditionally separate content, context, and certification. Technology brings new, rich resources into the learning experience; it can enhance the interaction between instructors and learners, as well as the interaction among learners. Also, technology can fundamentally change the way students and institutions approach assessment and certification.
Can technology do all the things that many claim and others suspect? Perhaps, over time. However, the truly compelling, carefully constructed assessments that might document enhanced outcomes and improved academic performance have yet to emerge; to date, much of the research literature reports no (statistically) significant gains.
Does the research literature provide a compelling case for broad investment in computers and information technology?
Currently the research literature offers, at best, a mixed review of often inconclusive results, at least when searching for traditional measures of statistical significance in learning outcomes. Van Dusen's 1997 review notes that it is "important to emphasize the essential neutrality of technological environments with respect to learning." Van Dusen refers to two other major reviews, which concluded that "instructional media (1) were not inherently superior and (2) did not directly influence student achievement.5
These two major reviews, separated by a decade that marked the growing use of computers in education, reach similar conclusions. Writing in 1983, Clark offered a "no significant effects" assessment for the impact of instructional media:
The best evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes change in nutrition . . .Only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement.6
A decade later, with broader experience using desktop computers, Russell offers a somewhat similar assessment:
No matter how it is produced, how it is delivered, whether or not it is interactive, low-tech or high-tech, students learn equally well with each technology and learn as well as their on-campus, face-to-face counterparts even though students would rather be on campus with the instructor if that were a real choice.7
Yet these studies and others typically focus on comparisons of how well students learn similar materials with and without technology. Much of the academic research fails to look at how technology changes and enhances teaching, learning, and instruction. Indeed, one of the more recent (and highly publicized) studies claiming enhanced learning outcomes because of an IT component suggests that student engagement, rather than the technology component in and of itself, may have been responsible for better academic performance.8
But in this context, maybe the key issue is how IT resources change teaching, learning, and instruction, rather than how technology affects specific (and often the lowest common denominator) learning outcomes. Perhaps the best article on this topic, a 1992 paper by Robert Kozma and Jerome Johnston, presents compelling evidence, drawn from a number of disciplines and a variety of campuses, about the role of information technology as a catalyst for or enabler of the qualitative dimensions of the learning experience.9 Summarized below, Kozma and Johnston identify seven ways that computing and information technology can be used in the transformation of teaching, learning, and the curriculum:
There are many ways that information technology can enhance the undergraduate curriculum and student learning experience. The key issue, as noted by Kozma and Johnson, is the effective use of information technology resources as tools to support instruction and learning outcomes, rather than to supplant the traditional faculty role.
In sum, Kozma and Johnson identify technology-based instructional interventions (all of which predate the WWW) thus documenting the successful use of computer software to improve the quality of learning and teaching in each of the categories described above. Indeed, Kozma and Johnson, drawing on their work with the faculty who received national recognition from the EDUCOM/NCRIPTAL Higher Education Software Awards Program,11 report that most award winners needed 5 to 7 years to develop their own instructional applications. Students in the classes of these faculty benefited significantly from the faculty effort to develop instructional software. But overall, Kozma and Johnston report minimal dissemination and adoption: beyond the students enrolled in the classes of the courseware developers, comparatively few students, courses, or other institutions ever benefited from that work.
Focus for a moment on just the classes where faculty used the EDUCOM·NCRIPTAL award software to support instruction. Were it possible to accurately calculate or even estimate the increases in student learning linked to these instructional resources, the "productivity gains" for individual students would (probably) produce impressive numbers. Students in these classes were usually not required to pay additional fees or invest much additional time, but they were enabled to learn more—to learn it faster, better, more comprehensively; technology, suggest Kozma and Johnson, enabled these students to become more engaged in the learning experience. In essence, Kozma and Johnson suggest that even in these early efforts, improved outcomes divided by stable costs generated increased productivity.
If the research is inconclusive, why do campuses continue to invest millions of dollars each year to acquire and support the instructional application of information technology? Although great aspirations play a role, other factors are evident.
Following a 16-year decline, the traditional college-age population in the United States is rising: The size of the U.S. high school graduating class will grow by more than 20 percent between 1994 and 2005, returning to peak levels last seen in 1978. Additionally, more high school graduates are going on to college: In 1995, the percentage of recent high school graduates who entered college a year after receiving a high school diploma approached two-thirds of the U.S. graduating high school class, up from 49.3 percent in 1980. In sum, the enrollment gains ahead are fueled by (a) more college age students and (b) a larger percentage more of these high school graduates going on to higher education.12
At the same time, the nontraditional college student cohort in the United States is also increasing, fostered by shifts in the labor market. U.S. Department of Education projections suggest that by 2000, 5 of every 11 college students attending U.S. colleges and universities will be age 25 or older. Concurrently, the number of students aged 35 and older will exceed those who are 18 and 19 years old.13 Admittedly, the growing adult clientele differs from the traditional student population in significant ways such as enrollment patterns (concentrated in community colleges; part-time enrollment status) and intended majors (occupational and professional programs, as well as short-term training and non-degree programs).
Taken together, these two "customer cadres" could push enrollments in American 2- and 4-year colleges and universities from today's 15 million students toward 20 million by 2010.14 But the new demand is not likely to be met with any significant increase in the physical capacity of higher education (i.e., new classrooms and new campuses). Given the rising competition for their social-service dollars, few states currently seem inclined to fund construction of new college campuses. Consequently, the demographic factors alone point to significant opportunities for using information technology (a) as a vehicle to deliver instruction and (b) as a resource to serve the growing demand in the absence of any significant expansion in the "mortar and brick" capacity of college campuses and classrooms.15
Rising college costs, as reflected in dramatic increases in college tuition over the past decade, have helped focus significant attention on the issue of productivity in higher education. Additionally, rising enrollments, increased demand for training, no significant gain in physical plant capacity, and increased competition for social services dollars all contribute to an expanded (and increasingly heated) discussion about productivity.
Not surprisingly, the January 1998 report of the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education identifies productivity as a top priority for American colleges and universities. While not explicitly citing technology as a potential solution for some of the productivity challenges confronting higher education, the language of the Commission's recommendations points in that direction:
What role does technology play in the discussion of productivity and college costs? Reduced to the core issue, the "technology yields instructional productivity" advocates are eager to demonstrate that information technology will (a) allow the same number of faculty to "teach" more students at the current (or at an enhanced) level of learning or (b) allow campuses to serve the same number of students with fewer faculty and with no loss in learning (either measured by what is learned or by the number of students who learn it).
Clearly, technology has brought both enhanced productivity and reduced costs to some parts of the academic enterprise. Like many corporations, colleges and universities routinely and effectively use technology in many administrative areas. As in the corporate domain, computers have improved productivity related to a wide range of data management and transaction-processing activities including personnel files, course schedules, library catalogs, accounting and budgeting, student transcripts, and admissions information. Growing numbers of campuses are placing more information (e.g., course catalogs, student handbooks, faculty/employee handbooks) on their campus WWW sites. Many are also using the WWW as part of their marketing strategy to reach prospective students and encouraging applicants to complete application materials online via the institution's WWW page.17
Moreover, in some parts of the faculty domain, technology has truly helped to increase productivity and reduce operating costs. For example, a generation of faculty has come into academic positions with little or no secretarial assistance from their departments or institutions: they routinely use a computer to prepare their own class materials, course syllabi, conference papers, grant proposals, manuscripts, and other documents. However, more than a dozen years into the much-discussed "computer revolution in higher education," relatively few in the campus community could successfully argue that postsecondary education has experienced any real gains in instructional productivity linked specifically to the introduction of computers and other kinds of information technology resources. In that realm, as ever, what still lingers is the "promise" of technology.
Indeed, there is ample and in some ways distressing evidence that traditional cost-benefit analysis and cost accounting models for instructional activities are difficult if not impossible for most institutions. Even if individual institutions experience some kinds of productivity gains (i.e., reduced costs) that appear directly linked to an IT intervention, it's not clear that colleges or individual academic programs can accurately or successfully measure these gains in a manner similar to the way that the corporate sector attempts to calculate a return on investment (ROI) value on investments in new technology.
Moreover, economist Howard Bowen's widely cited but too-often unheeded work on the costs of higher education provides compelling evidence that colleges and universities do not allocate resources in a rational manner. Bowen's analysis documented wide variations in instructional costs across similar types of institutions, as measured by mission, status, and clientele. In the end, Bowen noted, colleges and universities accumulate all the revenue they can and then spend all they accumulate.18 Such ingrained behaviors, coupled with a centuries old tradition of "high touch" instructional models, provide few incentives for institutions (or individuals employed by these institutions) to search for methods that might enhance instructional productivity, even in periods of financial duress or technological innovation.
Beyond demography and productivity, three additional factors push institutions in the United States and elsewhere to invest in a wide range of IT resources. These factors can be clustered into three categories:
Growing numbers of college-bound students come to campus with computer skills and technology expectations. In Fall 1995, more than one-half (55 percent) of all first-time, full-time college freshmen in U.S. colleges and universities reported having had, at a minimum, one-half year of "computer science" or some form of formal computing or technology instruction while in high school.20 These students, as well as their older counterparts who are likely to have had some experience with computers because of their work environments, now come into campus expecting to learn with computers and information technology, not just to acquire computer and technology skills.
Consequently, colleges and universities must invest in computers and information technology if only to tell their potential clientele that the institution provides the IT resources increasingly available elsewhere, meaning in homes, high schools, the workplace, and at competing institutions.
Indeed, across the collegiate curriculum—from astronomy and accounting to zoology and everywhere in between—various kinds of information technology resources, including but not limited to the WWW, hold the potential for providing rich, engaging resources for students. Images, statistical data, library materials, and more are all part of the potential mix that excites scholars and academic evangelists.
Finally, any discussion about technology in postsecondary education would be incomplete without citing the growing demand for distance education. Here demography and labor market issues converge: what drives the market for distance learning is growing numbers of (working) adults eager for various kinds of postsecondary experiences ranging from short-cycle certificates to complete degrees.
In this rapidly growing segment of the higher education market, traditional notions of access to postsecondary education take on new meaning, shifting from policy discussions about college costs and the racial/ethnic/income profile of students to operational planning focused on leased classrooms, part-time faculty, employer reimbursement policies, program certification, and distribution of "content and instruction" via various "enabling technologies" such as phone, video, and the Internet.
Clearly distance education is a booming business. The University of Phoenix (www.uophx.edu), a fully accredited, for-profit, postsecondary enterprise, proudly boasts that it is now the second largest private college or university in the United States.21 Chartered in 1978 and currently enrolling more than 42,000 students, Phoenix has been an aggressive competitor in both classroom- and cyberspaced-based distance education programs targeting adult learners. National Technological University has a well-deserved international reputation for providing timely, high-tech telecourses in engineering and computer science. Mind Extension University (now the Knowledge Network, a division of Jones International) distributes college courses from a growing array of institutions via cable TV networks.
But the increasingly technology-driven distance education movement extends well beyond the University of Phoenix, NTU, and Jones International, or the dozens of colleges and universities that broadcast telecourses on local cable systems. Ten minutes on a Web search engine at Yahoo!, Lycos, or Alta Vista yields literally hundreds of academic and commercial URLs for distance education programs and services from traditional institutions as well as new providers. New "digital universities" created by for-profit organizations (e.g., McGraw-Hill University; Ziff Davis University, University On-Line, among others) offer low-cost, WWW-based, short-cycle, asynchronous training, targeting a wide audience of working adults seeking to upgrade their IT skills.
Perhaps the most ambitious academic or commercial venture into distance education is Western Governors' University (WGU), a cooperative effort among more than a dozen western states. Start-up costs are estimated at $6-10 million. Charter documents, available at the WGU's Web site (www.westgov.org), outline a technology-driven "regional virtual university through which instruction will be accessible at the learner's convenience via advanced technology. This learning can be certified to the satisfaction of both employers and academic institutions through the assessment of competencies, and states and the private sector will share in the development and use of instructional materials." An ambitious mission, fueled by great aspirations.
But it appears that few in academe understand that the technology factors involved in distance education are different than the factors affecting more traditional models of instruction. Course content, not the classroom experience, drives distance education.
Indeed, with or without a technology component, distance education programs often are more responsive to market needs and student demands than most parts of the academic enterprise. As shown in table 2, market forces affect just about all aspects of distance education initiatives in ways that differ dramatically from the impact of market issues on more traditional academic programs.
| Aspect | Traditional Academic Programs | Distance Education |
| Mission | Mandated by trustees or state authorities | Determined by market |
| Curriculum | Faculty-centered | Content-centered |
| Credibility | Institutional reputation | Market performance of students |
| Financing Model | Operating subsidy | Profit and loss Analysis |
Perhaps like the California forty-niners eager to stake their claims for gold at Sutter's Mill almost 150 years ago, growing numbers of colleges and academic programs are rushing forward with little real planning and without a good map of the terrain. Certain that there is "gold" in distance education, many campus and public officials believe that institutions absolutely must "be there" ahead of (or at least "shoulder-to-shoulder" with) the competition—other colleges and universities as well as commercial ventures and in-house corporate training centers. Having spent some time wandering the WWW or captive to Mind Extension University's (now the Knowledge Network's) cable offerings in hotel rooms while they travel, administrators and program coordinators are often surprisingly confident that instructional technologies (cable, video, and the Internet, among others) will provide a low-cost, high-revenue distribution channel. Program officials also are often highly confident about the likely success of their efforts, even as they happily discuss the core problems that will undermine competitors' offerings. Technology is an increasingly important component of the overall distance learning plan, a core resource for both content and distribution that promises to make programs both viable and accessible.
While drawn to the light (and to the money), it is likely that many will be burned by the heat in the forge. Some institutions and programs have built their instructional development and delivery models on the premise of underutilized capacity and leveraged resources: the underlying assumption is that technology resources and instructional personnel involve marginal rather than core costs. Yet there are limits to leverage in every market and in every enterprise.
These issues—demography, productivity, the new ubiquity of IT, curriculum enhancement, and labor market expectations—only set the context for investments involving, and expectations about, the potential role of IT in collegiate instruction. Other questions remain.
Ten minutes spent surfing cable TV channels or well-developed corporate WWW sites quickly bring into focus many of the content and delivery issues affecting the role of technology in postsecondary education: can a campus-developed telecourse or WWW-based learning module on art history, astronomy,
biology, history, or physics compete with the content, quality, and production values routinely found in the programs broadcast each week on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, or the PBS Nova series? Can "campus products" successfully compete with the computer-based instructional tools and WWW-based, content-rich, digital resources that commercial developers —both small start-ups and large corporations—bring to the postsecondary market?
Indeed, many institutional officials have simply opted to avoid (or ignore) the core financial question: What are the real costs of content and supporting instructional resources in a technology-enhanced world of postsecondary education: $2 for a digitized version of a book chapter or scholarly article? $20-$50 dollars to have a work-study student or a media specialist videotape a faculty lecture? $20-$200 per hour for faculty time? $200-$2,000 for 60 minutes of an unedited classroom video? $20,000 for 30 minutes of a production-quality lecture? $100K for 60 minutes of commercial-quality video? $200-$400K for "complete" IT-based instructional modules?
Compare these costs—real costs—against the way many campuses and academic programs build financial models for their efforts to bring IT into instruction (and, more recently, distance education): supplemental pay for faculty to bring a course and syllabus from the classroom into an on-campus video studio, work-study wages for undergraduates to write computer code and to develop multimedia resources. Extended hours for graduate students, who are committed to an academic apprenticeship, to help senior faculty identify supporting materials for the transition from real-time classrooms to online or video environments. Unbilled hours committed by curriculum design specialists and technology support personnel. "Free" (or significantly subsidized) access to technology resources such as desktop computers, networks, servers, software, and more.
This is familiar if often forgotten terrain. Higher education's first wave of desktop computing, in the mid-1980s, was accompanied by some ambitious faculty efforts to create "courseware" intended to supplement and enhance instruction. Some of these initial efforts were little more than "widget" templates for spreadsheets; others were more sophisticated endeavors. The expanding use of technology by students and faculty between 1984 and 1994, coupled with the lure of (and hype surrounding) "multimedia," subsequently tempted still more faculty to try their hand at developing instructional materials. Often these initial campus efforts were supported by foundations, technology firms, or small, seed-money institutional grants; others were fueled only by the good intentions and instructional aspirations of individual faculty drawn to the potential of instructional technology.
By 1996, the exploding use of the Internet and the World WideWeb provided yet another catalyst for faculty, institutions, and instructional publishers to revisit the role of technology in classroom and distance education. The cross-platform ubiquity of the WWW in the campus community, not bounded by IBM-compatibles, WinTel systems, Macintosh computers, or Unix workstations has helped to resolve some earlier infrastructure and compatibility problems linked to hardware, software, and access. The explosive growth of potentially useful content on the WWW, coupled with new, easier to use development tools, has lured some faculty to examine again the role of information technology in their instructional activities and scholarly work.
But the return on the dollars and faculty time invested in instructional development has been mixed: the campus experience of the past decade reveals that successful instructional development typically depends on an interdisciplinary team of content specialists, instructional designers, and codewriters. The late-night efforts of "early adopter" faculty to create "courseware," let alone complete instructional modules, often
have not been successful: many efforts underestimated the challenge of developing instructional materials, as well as the real financial costs and accompanying time commitments. Additionally, faculty developers (and their student assistants/codewriters) frequently encountered some variation of the 80/20 rule: the last 20 percent of the development/software task often requires 80 percent of the effort. Finally, successful faculty developers and their student assistants encountered an often unexpected problem: updating their products with new content, an enhanced interface, and more features, they quickly learned that software and digital content, unlike the published paper, has a life after the initial release.
The all-too-common campus investment strategy in technology-based courses—small seed money grants of $5,000 or $10,000 clearly helps to fuel individual aspirations. But the accompanying great expectations for significant (if supplemental) classroom modules or distance education courses typically require significantly more money.
But what about the campus project that readily consumes $50,000, or $100,000, or maybe even $500,000? Probe beneath the surface at some campuses that invested heavily in serious efforts to develop courseware and multimedia content: and it is often easy to find the stories of well-conceived development projects that were a sponge for institutional and foundation dollars. Although fueled by good intentions and great aspirations, many (perhaps most?) of these efforts unfortunately failed to produce an instructionally useful or commercially viable product.
In contrast to campus models of seed grants and contributed (or uncharged) time, major college market publishers (e.g., Addison Wesley Longman, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, among others) have spent millions over the past decade developing video and digital ancillaries linked to their textbook products: here too the return on investment—as measured by sales revenue and educational impacts—has been modest at best. Indeed, many college publishers acknowledge in private conversations that their investments are often a defensive posture made to protect the position of a leading textbook.
Beyond the traditional publishers, new kinds of IT development firms are assessing the campus market carefully. Perhaps the best-funded of these new entries is Academic Systems in Mountain View, CA (www.academic.com). Currently focused on developing "technology-mediated, multimedia learning resources" for remedial and entry-level courses in math and English, Academic Systems has secured investment from some of the top U.S. venture capital technology firms and companies. Similarly, other established technology firms are looking at the campus market carefully. For example, Lotus and IBM are promoting the Notes/Domino-based Lotus Learning Center as a comprehensive solution for some kinds of IT-based instruction.
It is too early to assess the initial success of these corporate efforts—both as instructional solutions and as software start-ups. For traditional college publishers, much of the IT investment has been a "loss-leader" intended to promote traditional textbooks. For the early venture capital (vc)-funded start-ups targeting the campus market, there is too little product and too little history to assess the chances (or impact) of particular products, strategies, or firms. Additionally, despite some claims for significant success in enhancing learning outcomes and reducing instructional costs, as yet there is too little independent research verifying the advertised results of the products emerging from many of the commercial firms targeting the campus market.
Seen in this context, and looking broadly across campus and corporate boundaries, instructional development for the campus market begins to look like a venture capital business—generally acknowledged as risky business. Venture capital, like a campus seed grant, seeks the innovative idea and individual. But even with diligence, venture capitalists know that at best only 1 in 10 (or fewer) investments will be successful. For every VC-financed startup that turns into an Apple, Compaq, Netscape, or Yahoo!, literally hundreds of small, venture-financed companies created by smart people with compelling ideas never survive. Most will burn through the initial money and crash; a few will break even, while less than 10 percent (or perhaps even 5 percent) survive, let alone thrive.22
Although the sums are small compared to the money involved in venture capital, the campus experience over the past decade reveals that the dollars can be daunting, the return on investment highly uncertain. Consequently, growing numbers of institutions are looking to external sources (textbook publishers, curriculum entrepreneurs) to provide technology-based instructional modules, rather than invest in faculty efforts.
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[High Tech vs. High Touch:... (part 2 of 2)]