Australian universities embrace the age of the MOOC

Few industries are set to be as disrupted by digital technologies as tertiary education.

“It’s the perfect storm,” says Jonathan Churchill, director of Information and Technology Resources at James Cook University.

The combination of the availability of high speed broadband networks, Web 2.0 technologies for rich collaboration and cheap tablet devices for ease of access, means the online education revolution that was “over-priced” and “never delivered on” ten years ago is now frighteningly real.

A 2012 report by Ernst and Young called the University of the Future [pdf] concluded that “the dominant university model in Australia — a broad-based teaching and research institution, supported by a large asset base and a large, predominantly in-house back office — will prove unviable in all but a few cases over the next 10-15 years”.

“And then along comes the MOOC,” says Churchill.

A Massive Open Online Course presents to small universities the sort of challenge peer-to-peer file sharing networks presented to record companies in the noughties - a very real threat to long-established channels of revenue.

MOOCs are short, online courses - complete with all the video lectures, tutorials, materials and tasks one might expect from a module of a university degree - offered online to the entire web population free of charge.

The best MOOCs have caught on in a big way. One course on Artificial Intelligence offered by Stanford University attracted a whopping 160,000 enrolments.

The quality of MOOC being made available by well-financed service providers (Coursera, Udacity) on behalf of respected institutions (starting with Stanford and MIT), and the speed at which the model has been embraced internationally (the University of New South Wales offers a computing course as a MOOC) has alarmed vice chancellors concerned at how these free online alternatives might impact their business model.

“For higher education, this is traumatic,” Churchill said. “We’ve had protected, safe markets for so long. Our institutions are 1000 years old, established by government legislation. But these changes question the way universities are governed and organised. Now is the time this incredibly enduring model is going to be disrupted.

“How we make money is fundamentally under threat.”

For all the many and varied courses available at any one institution, the business model of Australia’s universities is fragile.

Even those activities covered by government grants or industry sponsorship tend only to pay for themselves. The worrying point is that a small number of courses - degrees such as Commerce, Business, Accounting or Law - subsidise losses made elsewhere. If MOOCs were to prove a substitute for only small number of the total student population - specifically foreign full-paying students studying these degrees - the whole pack of cards could fall down.

How to respond?

For many Australian universities - which cannot compete with the scale of the Stanford’s and MIT’s - there is uncertainty as to how to respond.

Most would argue that while a mass online course might provide its audience the same knowledge as a University student might gain, it won’t provide the official degree a student requires to gain employment.

“I don’t see MOOCs as the game changer,” said Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander in a recent speech on digital futures in Australian higher education. “I see it as a signal that people want to learn in very different ways.”

But Churchill isn’t so complacent.

James Cook University, based in Australia’s north-east and Flinders University, based in Adelaide, are two universities that have recently hired new leaders to devise strategies for how to thrive in this rapidly evolving world.

Flinders hired former Swinburne University CIO Professor Richard Constantine and appointed him both CIO and Pro-Vice Chancellor, while Churchill came to James Cook after a role as associate director of IT at the University of Adelaide.

Both are under no misapprehensions as to the challenge ahead.

“I think a MOOC will evolve into something that competes directly with a degree,” Churchill said. “It will get to the stage that a candidate for a job will be able to demonstrate enough competency after completing a MOOC that an employer might say, that’s fine, come and join my company.”

How is Flinders and JCU looking to embrace the challenge? Read on to find out...

Cost-constrained universities can’t see a reason to entertain launching their own MOOCs without a revenue model attached. But both Churchill and Constantine see an opportunity.

Flinders University, which is in the midst of an organisation-wide IT rethink, plans to offer MOOCs within months.

Professor Constantine has contributed to the Federal Coalition’s Higher Education Working Group study into online education [pdf] on the subject.

He believes there may be various ways to earn revenue from MOOCs in the future. But he is taking a series of small, cautious steps to prove out the model first.

“My KPIs this year is to try new things for the University,” he said.

Constantine has sought out industry partners with existing technology platforms and audience channels to ensure the MOOCs can reach a broad audience while maintaining constraints on costs.

“We came to realise we couldn’t do it ourselves,” he said. “We simply won’t get the exposure. If Flinders University was to set up a MOOC next time and launch it on our web site, would we get the numbers Stanford and Harvard have? We need partnerships with other organisations.”

While Flinders University is likely to provide the content, Constantine will look to the private sector for organisations to host and distribute the content that offer revenue sharing opportunities.

“Some Universities refuse to do it because there is no money in it,” he said. “Not immediately, no.

“There is tremendous opportunity in on-selling,” he said. “Once a young person has completed a MOOC you created, you contact them to say, well, you did well, you got a certificate of completion. How about a post-grad diploma in x and y? We can even offer credits for MOOCs completed at other institutions if they finish the course.”

But what if none of the students are willing to pay to come on campus?

“There is information you can gather and harvest,” he said. “If you start getting 100,000 students doing online courses, you can start building a big alumni database,” he said. “Beyond the opportunities for on-selling, there are opportunities to use that database to crowdsource information for research. Some of these people might never be a paying student. But they are interested, committed, people - 100,000 people ready to give you feedback on the strategy of your university.”

Churchill equally doesn’t expect James Cook University to be competing with Stanford University. JCU’s investment in MOOCs will be as much a showpiece - a marketing investment - that reveals not only the quality of the University’s content but also the unique experience of studying in tropical Queensland.

“There are two types of people who are going to win in Higher Education,” Churchill said. “The first will win through economies of scale - institutions with deep pockets, massive revenue, lots of students and incredibly good content will compete in a global market. That, unfortunately, counts out all but a handful of institutions in this country.

“Trying to offer online-only degrees as a small university - how is that sustainable?

“So if you can’t win with economies of scale, it’s about understanding a niche, understanding your place in the world. James Cook University is a university in and of the tropics - the research is focused on the tropics. We offer students the ability to move between campuses in Singapore and Queensland.”

He envisions a MOOC that showcases marine biology, for example, as both a compelling and interesting subject, but also as a subject best studied in its physical context.

“‘What it needs to convey is that if you really want to do marine biology, come to JCU - with the Great Barrier Reef next door.”

Vision of field work out on the reef should be in the mix, as should content that shows students collaborating on campus.

“A MOOC should be a taster,” he said. “They should showcase the best of the campus experience alongside some of the best of the content you have to offer. Coming to University is as much about interacting with fellow students and academics.”

Churchill qualifies that the experience has to match the promise. If your institution is going to appeal to students that would be just as comfortable studying the courseware from the comfort of their home, systems and processes at the University have to focus on a great end user experience.

“If students decide to physically attend the University, it better not be for a transactional service experience in a queue or filling out a form,” he said. “I never have to queue to do my banking anymore - I never even go into the bank anymore - why should I have that experience at University? Counters, queues and paper forms is not the world of today’s prospective student.”

Within days of starting his new job at JCU, Churchill walked the campus taking photographs of anything that pointed to a legacy of bureau culture. “This counter is open 10-12 Tuesday and Thursday,” he saw in one faculty, another advised students to “queue here.” 

“That is the legacy of the way universities have delivered services - and nothing could be more alien to the way a 19-year old consumes services elsewhere.”

The format of the current lecture theatre, where 300 students are given a “one-way download from a sage on a stage”, also has to change, he said.

“Interactions on campus must now be interactive, and that means doing them on a smaller scale”. Courses need to be “decomposed” into work tasks, where “students learn from doing with the academic as facilitator and coach”, he said.

Relishing the challenge

Churchill and Constantine are enthralled by the role IT is going to need to play to deliver these outcomes.

“Its a brilliant time to be in education,” Churchill said. “In the past, IT was a utility provider. It was important, but certainly not strategic. Over time, I feel it has the potential to become the most strategic thing to the organisation.

“Overcoming these challenges means we need to provide thought leadership for our organisations and think strategically as CIOs. We will need to leverage cloud services - we can’t be spending our time on plumbing and utility services as we did 20 years ago.”

He recalls a rollout of iPads back at Adelaide University that served not only to engage students but, quite by accident, was the catalyst for teachers to refresh their materials and re-imagine how they delivered lessons.

“Venture Capitalists sometimes ask: what is the business model for MOOCs? That is an interesting question, but not the right question. People didn’t ask Columbus for his business model before the voyage of discovery. We should be on board to experiment and test what works.”