How Technology
and The Learning Force
Are Reinventing The University
Presented
to The Canadian Institutional
Research and Planning Association (CIRPA)
Sunday,
October 6, 2002
Ottawa,
Canada.
Gerry Kelly
President
Royal
Roads University
Victoria,
BC, Canada
INTRODUCTION
Mesdames et messieurs, bonsoir. J'ai le plaisir de
m' adresser a
vous ce soir. Le sujet sera
"comment la technologie est en train de transformer le monde du travail et
le monde des etudes." C'est ainsi que Royal Roads renouvelle le concept
de l'université au Canada. C'est ce qui
explique la réussite de l'Université Royal Roads.
Good evening...it's a pleasure for me to be speaking with
you, the members of the Canadian Institutional Research and Planning
Association. My presentation is entitled: How Technology and The Learning Force
are Reinventing the University. I am about to complete what is for me the most
exciting stage of my career, as I will shortly retire as President of Royal
Roads University. Coincidently as I am here talking with your society, it was a
visionary publication about transforming higher education commissioned by your
counterpart organization in the U.S. - The Society for College and
University Planning (SCUP) - that really excited me about becoming involved
in the start-up of Royal Roads University in the first place.
My thesis this evening is in keeping with your conference
theme of universities in transition. It is as follows…around the world I hear a
familiar refrain from university presidents: demand for higher education
continues to increase, costs continue to rise but the capabilities of
governments to fund, and thus sustain the existing paradigm, are at best flat
or more likely declining. Furthermore, the conventional model, while excellent
for certain roles, is not particularly well suited and responsive to the world
of change experienced in the workplace.
Given the factors of demand for access, cost, funding and
responsiveness, there is a crying need for “transformed” models of higher
education in Canada, which complement our existing institutions. One size does
not fit all! Some alternatives are readily available if we are prepared to be
creative in the application of technology, apply what we already know about
curriculum design and teaching excellence and are willing to design new
organizational forms centred clearly on the needs of those we serve. A friend of mind told me to pull this off
you would have to be creative, crafty, courageous and, he added, a bit
crazy. As to the most appropriate descriptor
for myself and Royal Roads, I leave it up to you to be the judge.
The SCUP publication in 1995, one with which you are no
doubt familiar, is entitled Transforming Higher Education: A Vision For
Learning in the 21st Century – written, or should I say envisioned by,
Michael Dolence and Donald Norris.
As planners and consequently professional visionaries
yourselves I trust you will find it stimulating to hear just how Canada's
newest "special purpose" university stacks up against the
transformational criteria outlined by Dolence and Norris. Tonight I will
highlight pivotal points raised by the authors and then compare them with the
Royal Roads innovation. I will also discuss with you some of the challenges we
have surmounted on our journey.
This has been a journey which necessitated in many ways no
less than reinvention of the traditional University - a path chosen
which is different for very good reasons, but not so radical that we couldn't
fit within the conventional paradigm.
As Royal
Roads University enters its seventh year, what was an "experiment" in
innovation has now taken root. RRU has become the second largest graduate
school in BC enrolling close to 3000 learners from the workplace with an
average age of thirty-eight. Our School
of Business MBA program is now one of the largest in Canada. Royal Roads is "accredited" as a
member of the Association of Canadian Colleges and Universities (AUCC), and is
a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Canadian
Virtual University.
Distinctive features include a "special
purpose" Royal Roads University Act and a combined short on-campus
residency and distance delivery model which maximizes both learner access and
space utilization. It generates about ten times the use of campus facilities,
which are fully utilized year round; increasing self-sufficiency (RRU has
lessened reliance on government funding from 85% to 37%); competency-based
curriculum designed with industry advisory boards; an applied research focus
building on learners’ contacts with industry; academic freedom with a
non-tenured performance-based faculty model drawing expertise from universities
and industry worldwide; faculty learning facilitator certification; a unique
corporate model of governance enabling the university to readily adapt to
change; and an institution-wide ISO continuous quality improvement process
enhancing all programs and services.
We have learned that by changing access,
curriculum and program innovation also necessitates change in the universities
infrastructure. These have led to the purpose built organization, governance,
staffing, support services and funding model, which is also the foundation for
our competitive advantage.
We now have 2126 graduates whose assessment of the overall
quality of their learning
experience ranges from 4.2 to 4.8 on a 5-point scale. Given the facility
of instantaneous communication, we increasingly operate on a global scale and
will grow to 5000 learners in the short term.
TRANSFORMING HIGHER EDUCATION:
DOLENCE AND NORRIS - SCUP
First, a brief recap of some of the basic ideas found in SCUP's
Transforming Higher Education:
You are aware of the broader context underlying their call
for transformation.
It goes something like this...the shift from the
Industrial Age to the Information Age economy...a new economy now driven
by learning and knowledge - the consequent educational shift from
time out for schooling - to a fusion of work and learning. Given the
interdependence between work and learning...lifelong learning becomes a
necessity and higher education increasingly deals with a broader age
spectrum...25 to 65 or more.
Dolence and Norris pose the question: How will Canadian higher education
accommodate growing demands from learners of all ages?
To maintain currency of knowledge for adults, they project
that the average person in the workforce (now the learning force) will
be studying the equivalent of about 30 credit hours over 7 years; this
translates into the equivalent of 1 in 7 people studying fulltime. If Canada has a workforce/learning force of
about 14.7 million, then the equivalent of 2.1 million Canadians/ lifelong
learners need somehow to be accommodated.
They point out that if we tried to do this within the
existing model for higher education, Canada will need to build 140 new
15,000-FTE student campuses at construction costs of about 35 billion dollars,
with annual operating costs of about 25 billion dollars...close to the
entire annual budget of a typical Canadian province or - to put it in closer
proximity to our world - what is spent yearly on higher education in all of
Canada.
At a time when demand and costs are increasing and budgets
are being squeezed with just the system we have now...no way, you say, will we
get funding to build 140 new institutions.
Whether you agree or not with their numbers, funding may be
the easy part because money is only a small part of the issue. Don't forget the
model assumes we are dealing with mid-career learners; these 15,000-FTE campuses
are really serving a community of about 100,000 working people whose needs
differ dramatically from those of younger students. Is the existing paradigm
designed for their needs? Would we even ask them about their needs?
Royal Roads asked and we got a very clear message: we heard,
providing you offer value-added quality education, we are willing to pay for
it. What do they mean by quality? Design the university around our needs, not
yours. Create learner-friendly access. Provide only outstanding
teaching…professors “with mud on their boots” who are current in research and
practice. Recognize intellectual competence gained outside the formal system
and offer programs within a flexible organization attuned to our real and
changing world. Be flexible; as mid-career lifelong learners we have mortgages,
car payments, children in school and a hard earned lifestyle we wish to
maintain. We must continue to be fully employed while also studying full time.
And by the way, the model must also be accepted within the system.
In response to their needs, the challenge for Royal Roads
has been to figure out how to design and maintain a nimble organization,
innovative curriculum and delivery modes, teaching quality and applied research
while operating as educators and entrepreneurs to generate the resources
required to support the model. As you
can imagine, an ongoing dynamic tension is to gain acceptance within the system
while also resisting the incessant gravitational pull of the traditional
paradigm, which would pull us off course.
Why a new model? The most recent AUCC (EKOS)-commissioned survey of public attitudes to Canadian Universities shows general support and satisfaction with our venerable institutions with at least one notable exception...more than half the public say our universities fail to meet adult knowledge needs...I don't see this as a criticism, as our universities are generally designed around what is deemed appropriate education for the 18- to 24-year-old.
There are some major differences between the two age groups,
or may I use the term markets? James Duderstadt, President Emeritus of the
University of Michigan, writer on change in higher education and author of the
thought-provoking book " A University for the 21st Century",
comments on the difference:
"the high performance workplace challenges university
tradition...responsive learner centred institutions with a higher degree of
quality and relevance more appropriate to the age of knowledge are demanded..”
And complimenting Duderstadt, here is what Dolence and
Norris suggest what we need to do to redesign education responsive to the
workforce:
1.
Create a new model of higher education that shifts the
paradigm from inputs to outputs, from provider driven to learner
driven. Assess what customers/clients/learners really need and act
accordingly! Simple but profound ideas
in their application.
2.
Create new delivery systems that are technology
based. Develop new learning systems beyond the classroom... reconceptualize the
organization around essential outcomes; de-institutionalize learning,
push out the organization’s boundaries using technology, and design new
organizational interfaces with learners into networked learning environments.
3.
Create the Learning Franchise...through technology,
offer individualized and perpetual learning, moving away from "I’d better
learn this just in case I'll need it" - to more purposeful just
in time learning…open access for everyone with resources to compensate the
provider...user-pay!
4.
Create new forms of Educational Organizations...shift
from Industrial Age institutions which focus on quality of student and
faculty inputs, teaching, time spent in seats curriculum, to
Information Age models which focus on quality of outcomes, learning
not teaching, competency-based curriculum, virtual learning, and integrate work
and learning. The learner becomes a knowledge navigator.
I will return to chart these
points for comparison in a few minutes.
THE INNOVATION AT ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY
We now turn to more background on Royal Roads followed by
how we compare with what Dolence and Norris envisioned. I should clarify that
although I will make this comparison, the RRU model evolved not using anyone
else's blueprint, but in response to our assessment of the market we are
serving. What's interesting to note is
that when education is truly designed around the needs of the learner you seem
to arrive at similar organizational outcomes and they’re quite different from
the norm. One need look no further than some of the Executive MBA schools,
burgeoning private universities stateside or, for that matter, innovative
university models currently planned by former presidents of BC’s most
prestigious universities.
A “Special Purpose” University
Royal Roads University (RRU),
occupying the site of the former Royal Roads Military College, was formed by an
Act of the Legislature of British Columbia in 1995 to be a new and distinct
university, providing learning services different from those of the established
universities in the province. As a
matter of fact, a clear message was sent that if Royal Roads were to become the
same as the traditional university there would be no need for us to exist. I
wholly agree! Over time, it will be interesting however to speculate on what
the forces of future change may bring...which institutions will become more
like the other? Is RRU a harbinger of a
new wave of some 21st century universities or is it predestined to
become like all the rest?
A report commissioned by the
BC government recommended that Royal Roads become a “special purpose”
university complementing the diversity of universities already operating in
British Columbia. A special corporate
identity entailed creation of applied and professional programs responsive to
the learning needs of persons in the workplace. These programs are currently centred on the four themes of
sustainable development, entrepreneurship, leadership and conflict management.
What was the planning behind RRU? With the end of the cold war, the military college was closed by
the federal government and merged with RMC in Kingston. The property was to be
sold! Perhaps! The campus...minutes from Victoria, 520 acres of beautifully
forested land on the Pacific coast, centrepiece a 19th century castle,
residences and classrooms built for 300 cadets.
The BC government scrambled to invent a use for the
property. While the educational ideals underpinning the RRU model had been
incubating for some time, we were not the outcome of long-term planning.
Rather, we were a child born in the context of global change and its impact on
education...a time when the notions of knowledge economies, information and new
communications technologies underscored lifelong learning as a necessity if one
was to be a truly functioning person in the 21st century. Royal Roads was an
idea whose time had come…the closure of RRMC was but the mother’s milk of RRU’s
invention.
As the Act and original terms of reference were being
devised, a few change-oriented people from the Ministry were told to "get
out there and make something happen."
A Board of Governors composed of dedicated community representatives
interested in change in higher education was appointed and an internal planning
committee drafted the first Education Plan.
In retrospect, many of these moves, particularly the Act
that encouraged structural and educational innovation, self-funding and a
unique governance model were absolutely brilliant. While not the focus of this paper, a more detailed assessment of
RRU will tell this story another time.
For myself, I was of course thrilled when asked if I had
some ideas of ways in which we could put the initial Education Plan into
action...my brain fast forwarded... here was an incredible opportunity to work
with like-minded people to put into practice everything I had learned and
dreamed about from when I started as a student teacher at McGill forty years
earlier…beliefs about teaching, learning and how you could go about organizing
the enterprise. And to do so based in
one of the most beautiful settings on the planet was an added bonus.
The foundation upon which the University is built is a
straightforward one...we would borrow benchmark practice from education and
industry, melding it into quality programs and an organization which was intent
on being genuinely customer or learner responsive-one where quality would be
determined by the consumer, not the provider.
A
Different Model
RRU is faced with the
challenge of how best to relate the University’s organization to the needs of
working people. To promote connectivity
to the changing workplace an alternative was created. The different model is
expressed in a number of ways:
·
an entrepreneurial approach
focused on becoming highly self sufficient within ten years (2005); the
University is intent on becoming self funding by providing value added
education which meets the quality demanded by the mid career learner;
·
a flexible, responsive
organization focused on meeting learner rather than institutional needs. Programs utilize the expertise of advisory
boards to identify learning needs of individuals in the market place;
·
in business terms, RRU
operates in a quality customer service culture. In educational terms RRU is a learner-centred university
operating in a learning-centred community.
·
all RRU programs utilize outcomes
based curriculum, are highly team based and engage learners in intense,
close-knit learning communities both on campus and on line.
·
A corporate model of
governance combining Board and Senate with a defined mandate for an Academic
Council and decentralized decision-making authority allows the University to
make timely decisions and to be nimble in responding to change in the market
place.
·
A non-tenured performance
based staffing model allows RRU to engage a small group of skilled professors
and researchers and a larger body of associate professors/scholar practitioners
from academe and industry worldwide.
The following are some
examples of exactly what the “difference” is and how it impacts learners:
Royal Roads might be
currently depicted as a small “m” management school. Designed
by industry based Advisory Boards, about eighty percent of our enrolments are
in Master’s programs designed by advisory boards, including programs in
Leadership and Training, Environmental Management, Conflict Analysis and
Management, Knowledge Management, Distributed Learning management and several
applied specialties in Business Administration.
All of the graduate programs
are offered through an intensive team based residency component followed up by
distance delivery. Learners are in
residence on a campus either twice or three times during their two-year
program. All programs have a research component with applied research courses
and a thesis situated in the mid career learner’s rich organizational setting.
Royal Roads University offers
in a twelve month intensive package years three and four of BSc and BCom
programs. Alternatively, the programs are offered evenings and weekends or
provided by way of distance education combined with short on campus residence
periods.
All learners are accepted at
RRU with the expectation that they come here both as a learner and - based on
their experience - a teacher. Our faculty are superb at building teams and
cultivating learning communities. By the way, we see this as the secret to our
high rate of program completion as teammates help one another through the
loneliness of distance learning. During the intensive residency periods the
residences serve as an extension of the classroom since classes are scheduled
from early morning through the evening with individual or group assignments
underway virtually around the clock- our own educational “boot camp.”
RRU offers a number of
executive development certificate and diploma programs aimed at specific
segments of the working population. In
this market area, Hatley Castle provides a significant advantage as a very
desirable site. Of course in keeping with a life long learning ladder all
programs are “creditable” to advanced degrees.
What are some RRU
Achievements?
RRU and SCUP’s Transforming Higher Education.
Returning now to the SCUP model. Where does RRU fit on the continuum of traditional to transformed institutions described by Dolence and Norris? The following chart offers an estimation of how RRU fares when compared to the SCUP concepts.
INDUSTRIAL
|
SCUP
|
ROYAL ROADS
|
|
Provider Driven |
Learner Driven |
Learner Driven |
|
Inputs/time |
Outcomes |
Outcomes/time |
|
Classroom Teaching Time Out Learning |
Virtual Networks Learning Perpetual Learning |
Campus/Virtual Learning Facilitators Flex Time Learning |
|
Glacial Governance |
No Mention |
Nimble Governance |
|
Govt. $$ |
User Pay |
Value Added-Pay |
On a 10-point scale with a 10 being the transformed
information age model, overall I would estimate Royal Roads could be positioned
at about a “7” or “8”. What do you think?
1............................................. 5
...............……..RRU..................10
Traditional.... Transformed
Industrial Age Information Age
Conclusion
At Royal Roads technology has opened up new ways in which busy people can access learning...but this will apply equally to other universities over time. What is different about Royal Roads and in fact our competitive advantage is how we have integrated technology and curriculum within a purpose built organizational model. Altering the ways we create access and being demonstrably learner centred in all programs and services required a rethink and reformulation of the basic infrastructure of the university. Differences in the way in which we govern, organize, design curriculum, staff and fund the university were the outcomes of this enterprise.
Our learners generally describe RRU as a visionary and responsive innovation, some outside the university have different views, and some don’t get it at all. Others might argue that the Royal Roads model is not really new, it’s a 21st century renaissance of the original university. A restoration of values and re-creation of learning communities centred around people learning from one another, facilitated by outstanding professors. Learners in charge of their own educational destiny determining from who and when they learn and who are willing to pay for a value added proposition. These are all hallmarks of Royal Roads as through technology and in response to the learning force we reinvent the university.
As I
mentioned at the outset, as the capstone of my career as an educator it has
been an incredible privilege to have this opportunity to work with learners,
staff and community to see the Royal Roads vision become a reality.
Thank you
for inviting me to speak with you on this occasion and I look forward to
discussion of your questions and comments.
As a primer I offer a sampling of Issues and Challenges:
