BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Re:Why Pay for a Degree

[Egdiroh]

If everyone in the world has access to the information then why bother paying for the degree? As long as I can prove my understanding of the knowledge then why should I pay a particular university to vouch for me?

By that reasoning most certification programs should be a thing of the past.

He's Associat Prof of Instructional Psych and Tech

[eldavojohn]

At BYU. That's not a respectable title for this kind of speculation in my opinion. From his homepage [davidwiley.org]:

* BFA, Music (Vocal Performance), Marshall University, 1997. (Voice Teacher: Paul Balshaw)
* PhD, Instructional Psychology and Technology, Brigham Young University, 2000.
* Postdoctoral Fellowship, Instructional Technology, Utah State University, 2001.

Judging from his brief bio, this is something he'd like to see with little or no evidence to back it up. Good luck, man, I didn't find much backing this up other than you would like it.

Wiley is one part Nostradamus and nine parts revolutionary, an educational evangelist who preaches ...

You said it, not me.

Networking?

[svendsen]

Some good points in the article don't get me wrong. Right now I am going back for my 2nd master's degree. Being a little wiser now then my first time around I know one of the most important things (besides knowledge) is networking especially in this economy.

Seeing a prof. face to face or going for a few beers after class helps build a strong network one can leverage.

I'm not sure the pure online experience will allow for such strong networking. I know a few people who have done the pure online degrees (Univ. of Phoenix) when I ask them about their class mates, networking, etc. pretty much the answer I have received was there was none (or very little).

So it will be interesting to see how that aspect plays out.

Re:Why Pay for a Degree

[UncleTogie]

Interesting idea, but leaves the deaf folks out in the cold.

I should know. Went to a class Saturday where the videos weren't subtitled. Fairly useless to me, but I muddled through.

WITH subtitling, it might have some niche applications in distance education but I just can't see the brick and mortars going for this for all their students.

Re:Sure it will.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much like the paperless office never showing up, the claim that University classrooms will be irrelevant by 2020 is likely wrong.

Re:BYU Classrooms are already irrelevant

[wile_e_wonka]

Interestingly enough, I graduated from BYU with a degree in psychology. And so I am able to say two things with confidence: Mormons and BYU do not avoid teaching human sexuality (or cut pages out of textbooks), and you are a troll.

Re:Why Pay for a Degree

[eleuthero]

The problem is, most universities now have some sort of online program in addition to the brick-and-mortar (including the one for which I work). Since there is no way to distinguish between a physical-space degree at Harvard and a principally online degree, the disregard for the online degree will eventually phase out (though it may take a generation of HR directors who got where they were on the basis of an online degree).

Re:Untrue

[femtoguy]

As a faculty member at a fairly large private university, I have some opinions on that. I find that most of the actual learning occurs when I am talking with my students. This can occur in a large classroom as a conversation between me and a few students, with the other 250 students listening, it can occur with 30 students in a classroom, or it can occur in my office with 2 or 3 students. I have been forced to do on-line learning activities, mostly run through e-mail or bulletin board systems, and I have never had it work. I even tried using facebook as a vehicle, hoping that since students already spend most of their time there, they would be more familiar with it than they were with BZlackboard/Moodle. In the end very little course material was ever discussed on-line. I tried to get discussions, my TAs tried, even a few students tried, but nothing ever happened (except for a lot of part invites, and wierd pictures of cats).

Most of the reason for this lies with the students. They wanted help with math and formulas in their homework, and it is easier to do it on the whiteboard. They needed to converse and that is easier to do in person. In the end, most of the real traffic was invites to meet in the library for study groups, which is a very real use for the technology.

I don't want to be too down on on-line work. If you have a mature learner who knows what he or she wants to learn, then on-line, or books, or technical papers or whatever work well. If you have a bunch of 19-23 year old students who don't know how to learn (an BOY do they not know how to learn) then some sort of personal touch is the most valuable thing you can give them.

Re:Classroom interaction is valuable

[cvd6262]

I've taken a class from him. You can sign up to follow his open learning seminar via his blog and wiki. Though his lectures are only on blipTV, he does read everyone's blog and will respond.

I'm also a professor and I find blog-based discussion to be far superior to face-to-face. A few topics require the immediacy of being in person, but many many more conversations are best when each party has the time to think between submitting responses.

However, the headline is taken WAY out of context. This is what he said:

"If universities can't find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them (what's happening in the economy, affordability, the impacts of technology and openness, etc.)... universities will be irrelevant by 2020."

Cited from his blog [opencontent.org]

Re:Sure it will.

[dcollins]

Brick and mortar schools will continue to exist. In fact, they will likely exist just as they do now. Thing is that with secondary enrollment dropping and competition with foreign institutions on the rise...

No, college enrollment is rising. In places it's up 10, 30, even 50% in recent years. And, "Part of the enrollment increase is due to the rising number of foreign students."

http://www.examiner.com/x-1393-Education-Improvement-Examiner~y2009m2d18-Student-enrollment-rising-at-many-colleges [examiner.com]

Re:Sure it will.

[WCguru42]

If some teenager takes the SAT and gets a good score in 7th or 8th grade. Could they possibly get into college?

I actually know someone who pulled a 1550 (out of 1600) when he was in eight grade. He asked our school's counselor if he could use that score to get into college and got a pretty quick, "No!" The fact is, SATs are just stupid tests that don't tell you much about somebody. If you manage to get a great score, good for you, but if you can't back that up with good grades in coursework then it's pretty much moot.

Re:Sure it will.

[platypussrex]

I didn't say community colleges, I'm talking about the "all online" ones you see advertised all over the place, but which claim to have accreditation. And to the poster who said I have no clue, I have been to training seminars where these companies tout their job opportunities. You truly do get paid for counting how many times each student logs on per week, and no, there is no security in place for testing or anything else.