The Future of University Teaching

As my career winds down, and my daughters’ university teaching careers get started, I’ve asked myself how university education might look when they reach my age.  I’m pretty sure it will look much different.  I doubt the current “bricks and mortar” model will survive, except for the very wealthy students.  Instead, the conjunction of new technologies and disastrous economies is likely to lead to new models of delivery.

Learning about new lecture capture technologies (in the comfort of my own home)

I had a preview of this future during a Webex presentation I joined this morning by Frank Fedel of Eastern Michigan University on lecture capture and iClickers.  I have been an avid i<clicker user for years, but the lecture capture part was new to me.  Using Panopto, Fedel records instructions for upcoming labs, learning units, lectures, activities and demonstrations that can be viewed by students live or later.  What was particularly interesting to me was the ability to search these presentations.  If a student didn’t catch that bit on serotonin, you could search all of my lectures to find the parts where serotonin was discussed without listening to the whole thing.  I think this technology would be especially useful for students who have difficulty listening and taking notes simultaneously.  Fedel pointed out that you could review the lectures as many times as you want.

You might think that students with the option of viewing lectures remotely would never attend class, especially when it means braving the weather of Eastern Michigan.  Fedel says that his attendance remains the same, which might be due to his inclusion of clicker quizzes for each class session.

Although I love this kind of technology, and admire the time and effort faculty like Fedel put into their work, the cynic in me sees some red flags.  Some enterprising administrator is likely to see this technology as a way to achieve what Eddie Murphy referred to in “The Nutty Professor” as a “teacherless environment.”  Once all of our work is in this format, why would the university need us?  If you have 23 campuses in the California State University system, maybe you only need one person to teach introductory psychology, along with an army of lesser trained people to administer exams and so on. Most universities are conveniently vague when it comes to the ownership of “intellectual property” of work like this produced by faculty.

Before we reach this point, and I think it’s much closer than most of my colleagues are willing to believe, it would be nice to have some research pinpointing the pros and cons of having that instructor physically present in the room with you versus watching your classes on your iPad.