Research-Based Strategies for Teaching

The Takeaway: Craig and Williams argue that in order to keep up with current marketplace trends, universities should “unbundle” their services by focusing on individual competencies rather than degrees.

The Promise of Technology

Craig and Williams identify three areas where technology has the potential to make a material difference in higher education:

• Accessibility

• 66% of high school graduates enroll immediately in postsecondary education, making the likely overall U.S. matriculation rate over 70%.
• The emergence of online degree programs have allowed more students to access higher education, but they have not focused on affordability or efficacy as much as they could.

• Affordability

• The average bachelor's degree recipient who has taken out student loans carries $28,400 in debt, and 26 million consumers have two or more open student loans on their credit report.
• In the current higher education ecosystem. price continues to serve as a signal of quality. Most institutions offering online programs have done so at the same price point as their on-ground programs in order to maintain academic legitimacy.
• Moving to a competency-based learning model would reduce the cost of delivery by half within online degree programs, as well as ensure that students receive value from all educational products regardless of degree completion.

• Efficacy

• Online programs mostly replicate the format of face-to-face instruction (lectures, discussion, and weekly assignments), which fails to take advantage of a host of technology-enabled pedagogical models that offer the potential to greatly improve student outcomes.
• Studies also show that higher education fails to inform students about the complex processes of attaining a degree.

• For example, focus groups conducted at Macomb Community College in Michigan revealed that very few students were able to navigate the complexities of enrollment, financial aid, transcript requests, prior credit recognition, program selection, and course selection/scheduling.

• A simpler system could be reverse-engineered by starting with student outcomes, then moving to the assessments that prove that the outcomes have been achieved, and only then turning to the question of what curricula best prepare students for the assessments.
• Two sets of technologies can help facilitate more efficient forms of learning within online contexts:

• Adaptive Learning: In online contexts, students will progress at their own pace. In this approach, when students excel on formative assessments integrated into the curricula, they are served up more-challenging learning objects.
• Gamification: Successful next-generation online learning models will employ rewards and recognition to propel students onto the next unit without regard to their ability to stay focused on the long-term goal of earning a degree.

Two Visions for an Unbundled Higher Education Experience

• The Great Unbundling

• Bundling the value of a degree has been central to the higher education business model.
• Colleges and universities combine content and a wide range of products and services into a single package. When students pay for a degree, they are also buying products and services related to real estate, dining, sports, and research.
• The authors suggest this should change to allow students to only pay for the services they want or need.

• The Competency Marketplace

• Imagined as a future for an unbundled higher education, competency marketplaces (similar to services such as LinkedIn) profile the competencies or capabilities of students and job seekers, identify employer requirements, address gaps, and help students find and follow an educational path that gets them to their destination quickly and cost-effectively.
• As competency marketplaces and their associated algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, employers and students will begin to value the signals from these tools more than the signals from non-elite universities' bundled degrees

What are the individual competencies you think the credits in your courses represent? How do they map onto competencies that employers are looking for in college graduates?

What do you see as the risks and benefits associated with such unbundling? Does one strongly outweigh the other? If yes, why?