An artifact of centuries of schooling history in agrarian cultures, our universities have been bound by semesters, quarters, terms and other rigid predefined calendar schedules. Likewise, we have been fenced in by regulations of states, campuses and other locational limitations.

For good reason, it is time that these boundaries are broken! Learning should be defined by outcomes, not calendars and places. The policy relics of the past have become a minefield for so many learners and so many modes of learning models.

Back in the day when most youth were needed to help with work in the farming fields, our schedules were defined by breaks for tending to the cycles of life on the farm. Those days of the majority of residents engaged in farming went away with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. They weren’t even well aligned nationally—some with quarters, others with semesters. Now, well into the 21st century, it is time for our “terms” to go away.

The advent of computer-assisted instruction and, now, self-paced learning, enables personalized delivery of learning opportunities that appropriately enable learners to advance according to their mastery of material rather than conforming to a rigid calendar schedule. One of the biggest challenges I confronted regularly in my decades of university teaching was meeting the needs of students with a range of skills, abilities and knowledge in the same class. Too often, instructors are still forced by the calendar to “aim to the center of the class” rather than optimizing learning by providing materials just in time that address where the learner is in comprehension and subject mastery. The status quo is not only inefficient and ineffectual by definition, it is discriminatory to those with deficiencies in their prior learning as well as unfairly limiting to those who are ready to move to higher levels of learning in the subject area.

It is long past time that we implement a learning system that assesses learning often and moves students ahead who are ready to progress—and at the same time provides alternative approaches to enable those who are not yet ready to move ahead to avail themselves of the attention, support and time to reach prescribed outcomes. This requires that the mandated calendar-based schedules be discarded. They must be replaced by carefully constructed and frequently reviewed learning outcomes. As soon as students meet those outcomes, they should move ahead—not sooner or later based on a calendar that allows achievement assessed as A, B, C, D or failure! Everyone should achieve the level that is expected for success in the next step in their lives and careers. We don’t want C- or D-level surgeons, engineers or other professionals. No exceptions.

The current scheduled term system also hamstrings internship and apprenticeship opportunities. These can be very effective at offering “learning while doing” activities. However, they must be coordinated with the less flexible schedules at businesses, organizations and government agencies.

So, if we don’t assess tuition by the term, how do universities get income? Much of the business world operates with subscription models. We can do the same. We can adjust to a monthly, semiannual or annual billing system. This can provide a financial incentive for students to progress more quickly through the mastery process. Yet, it is flexible enough to allow brief stop-outs for the inevitable personal needs encountered in life.

We need greater flexibility for inter-institutional collaboration to benefit students. I recall one such activity from some 15 years ago in which I must confess that I and my co-conspirator, the late Julian Scheinbuks, failed to seek higher approvals for deviation from the normal class structures. Funded by an Illinois Higher Education Cooperation Act grant, we devised a program in which students from Chicago State University—an urban, minority-serving institution—and the University of Illinois at Springfield, a relatively rural institution with a then relatively low representation of minorities, merged in about a dozen classes online. In most cases students were not identified as to which institution they attended. One faculty member from each institution shared supervision in each class and assigned grades to students from their own institution. The engagement and perspectives shared in those classes were enlightening and worthwhile. Done without formal approvals, at both universities and higher boards, this kind of collaboration would have taken years to have been given the go-ahead. We need to open the door to such innovative collaborations without going through formal transfer of credit or other red tape.

Certainly, many institutions have credit for prior learning and related programs. Yet these programs too often require that an additional course be taken and significant fees assessed for each credit hour authorized. We need to open the learning vault to credentialing in creative ways—recognizing learning that has been documented in the past without the mountain of red tape and the milking of added tuition and fees. We must simply and efficiently recognize learning that took place in a different time and location.

The barriers have been put in place over time to sustain additional revenue generation, suppress individual initiative, and to promote continuity over innovation. The time is past in which universities have a monopoly in the learning universe. We must recognize that programs such as the Google Career Certificate program are already moving ahead with these approaches. We must review our policies and processes with an eye toward advancing learner freedom, efficiencies and effectiveness rather than institutional convenience and advantage.

Who is leading these changes on your campus? Are you in a position to advance learning innovation, lower costs and offer a more flexible approach than the restrictive term-based learning system? Will your institution lead or trail in moving beyond the boundaries of time and space?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching + Learning blog.

Postsecondary education is broken. The signs are obvious and pervasive. Although not perfect and not a universal solution, Google has launched an alternative approach that illuminates the way to address many of the shortcomings that plague our current system.

While the problems with education beyond high school are deep and many, three towering issues loom over the rest. Combined, they make continuing our current model untenable for the future.

First among the problems is the scale of student debt. U.S. student loan debt totaled $1.6 trillion as of March 31, 2021. This figure dwarfs all other forms of debt short of mortgages in this country. Anecdotally, senior citizens continue to carry student debt into their retirement years. For the most part, the debt is for baccalaureate degrees. Yet, in a recent study, investment in 40 percent of master degrees fails to produce a positive return.

Next among the problems is the long-standing, continuing problem of noncompletion. In almost any other industry with the exception of gambling, clients would not stand for an entity taking tens of thousands of their dollars with no return. Michael J. Petrilli writes in Education Next, “the six-year completion rate for any degree or certificate is currently 62.2 percent. That means that 37.8 percent of college students drop out with no credential to their name.” Taking a long view, it is astounding that consumers of education put up with this. How can we defend the fact that one-third of those who enroll leave with no credential?

Third among the problems is that a majority of the workforce does not feel fully prepared for their jobs in this Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is true among employers and employees alike. IBL News reports on a recent large-scale survey by Salesforce: “In the research, a total of 76% of global workers say that they feel unequipped and unprepared to operate in a digital-first world. However, only 28% of them are actively seeking skills training.”

There are many more problems in our field, but these three loom large over postsecondary education and society at large. These shortcomings have driven some of the larger employers in the country to drop their prior requirements that job applicants have a college degree. It has seemed impossible to solve these issues—they are too large, too pervasive, too daunting—that is, until now. Google has taken on the challenge—not to solve all problems for all people, but rather to build an example of how we can go about addressing these problems in a meaningful way.

Launched last year, the Google Career Certificate program offers the project management certificate, data analytics professional certificate, UX design professional certificate, IT support professional certificate, and IT automation professional certificate. All are for beginners in the field, and all are offered through Coursera and other institutions for as little as $39 a month after a free trial.

The American Council on Education recommends that 12 college credit hours be offered for selected certificates. “We are excited about this expansion of our Grow with Google Certificates program and the opportunity to partner with academic institutions across the US, including community colleges, which are critical to workforce development and economic mobility,” said Ruth Porat, Alphabet and Google CFO. “We believe that to have sustainable economic growth, we must have inclusive growth, and we are committed to continuing to help people develop the digital skills they need to participate in this economy.”

Google has offered the certificate programs free to community colleges, and a number of universities have incorporated the programs into their offerings. Notably, the University of London bachelor of science in computer science and the University of North Texas bachelor of applied arts and sciences degrees on Coursera as well as Northeastern University are among the institutions accepting college credit from entry-level Google certificates.

These are an advancement in that they are high-quality, cogent offerings by a leader in the field. However, other certificates and certifications have been offered by leaders such as Microsoft and Cisco for years. The real game changer, to my mind, is Google’s partner program with employers. Starting with nearly 150 employers, many among Fortune 500 companies, the program creates a pipeline for those who complete certificates to be put at the head of the line for consideration for hiring. This connection goes far beyond the traditional college placement office in creating a two-way relationship with a vast array of employers highlighting the certificate holders.

The Google Career Certificate program goes a long way in addressing the top three problems in postsecondary education. It is affordable—with a $39-per-month tuition program for a certificate that should take six months or so to complete—and is one program that is not likely to add substantially to student debt. Recently, Google announced a $100 million Google Certificates Career Fund that “will allow Social Finance, a nonprofit partnering with Google on this endeavor, to fund the earning of Google Career Certificates for 20,000 people.”

Given the brevity of the program, the free trial period and built-in supports for students, the Google Certificate programs would seem to be less likely to lead to a dropout rate approaching the nearly 38 percent of students who drop out of college without anything to show for their efforts. And, perhaps most directly, the Google Certificates programs address the needs for employees to be prepared to thrive in the emerging digital-first world.

Writing in Inc., Jeff Steen suggests that higher education should take notice. “While some sources argue these are best used to amplify an undergraduate degree—not replace it—the low cost to entry and Google’s connection to more than 140 companies make it easy to get your foot in the tech door … Whatever the course of higher education, your efforts to upskill talent can only empower, uplift, and support those who want to advance their careers—without forcing them to pile on debt.”

Is your institution affiliated with the Google Career Certificate program? Who at your institution is considering the impact of this high-quality, low-cost initiative with an impressive placement program on your own IT academic offerings? Is anyone considering how this model may be replicated in other fields?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.

The concept of a higher ed metaverse is less about replicating the brick-and-mortar university and more about creating a unique reality immersing learners in experiences, creativity sandboxes and assessments that enable learning.

The emergence of the metaverse in education has been in development for some two decades. Progress has been slow, in part because of slow adoption of the concept and in part because of technological challenges. Certainly, through virtual gaming early versions of the metaverse have been modeled and refined. We can see those in Second Life, Minecraft, Roblox and scores of other virtual platforms that have emerged since 2000. The display and networking technologies are approaching standards that enable a seamless virtual experience that can support mobile virtual and augmented reality. Complex simulations can be delivered that adapt to the learner’s needs.

For some years, digital twinning has been created to provide online comprehensive, detailed information of a “real” object or program: “A digital twin is a virtual/digital replica of physical entities such as devices, people, processes, or systems that help businesses make model-driven decisions. Digital twins are changing the way work is done in different industries with varying business applications. Knowing those applications can help businesses implement digital twins into their processes.” This is particularly useful in introducing and maintaining devices and processes.

However, when it comes to creating a robust digital human twin, entirely new questions arise. How much information should be shared, to whom and in what situations. Even by storing rich details of a person, there are significant questions of the vulnerability of access to the health and personal data. In the case of a human digital twin, not only is the twin a visual avatar, it is a representation that automatically updates with detailed information about your actions and all monitored activity.

Imagine that you as a person are represented digitally. Your digital activities, behavior, decisions, and future decisions are not only known but silently influenced by your digital shadow … Every time you access a digital device, even when you move or just sit with your smartphone, there’s data generated. And, this data is used to build your digital profile. With enough data fed constantly to the cloud and into new AI and machine learning technologies, your digital twin is being created. Yes, at this very moment, and the moment after.
—Jacek Chimel, Avenga Labs

The consequences of this kind of collective documentation and prediction of behavior are enormous. Your digital twin is constantly growing with data supplied from a myriad of sources including your web activity; phone activity; public records (voting, driving, civil courts and more); health records; and much more. When predictive analytics are applied, vendors and other observers can project your next education, career, avocation and even personal inclinations and moves.

It is not surprising that most people think the metaverse is a privacy nightmare.

NordVPN surveyed over 1,000 people in the United States to see how they feel about this place that doesn’t exist. As it turns out, 55% don’t know what the metaverse is … Just 14% had a real grasp of the metaverse and how it functions. But even without a true understanding of it, lots of people were rightfully skeptical of how their information would be protected there. Eighty-seven percent had privacy concerns, 50% thought it sounded like the perfect place for hackers to impersonate others, 47% didn’t think there’d be legal protections for users’ identities, and 45% thought just having a presence in the metaverse would force them to share even more of their private data, which could be abused.
—Chandra Steele, PC Magazine

Certainly, these privacy concerns must be addressed, and they must be addressed now, before we create an environment in which our educational presence becomes a personal vulnerability. Given the clear opportunities and advantages of such an environment, the higher ed development of the metaverse is not to be denied. However, we must be vigilant to protect privacy.

There are clear opportunities and advantages that will be provided by immersive virtual environments in higher ed. Kwang Hyung Lee, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, writes in Times Higher Education, “We aim to go beyond online education by creating a ‘metaverse’ that provides assistance for running classes and creates an immersive learning experience that runs the gamut of campus activities while using the latest digital technologies … Universities around the world are now on the same starting line. They need to innovate and pioneer new approaches and tools that can enable all sorts of campus activities online. They should carve out their own distinct metaverse that is viable for human interaction and diverse technological experiences that promote students’ creativity and collaborative minds.”

We are poised to reconsider many of the assumptions of on-campus learning models. Just as online learning changed the ways in which we engaged learners and expanded our opportunities, the metaverse may bring even farther-reaching changes. In The Conversation, Essex University professor John Preston writes, “If recorded academic lectures become the intellectual property of universities rather than individual lecturers, the metaverse academic might find their words and ideas repackaged and presented through artificial intelligence in the metaverse. These technologies could allow for the production of an infinite number of lectures delivered by a range of animated and avatar academics.”

I cannot help but to draw an analogy to the advent of online learning in the early 1990s. It was clear to many of us even then that higher education was going to be revolutionized by learning online. It is clear now that the next leap in the digital transformation of higher education is upon us with the advent of the metaverse. This will bring huge changes to the way universities deliver learning: the way in which students engage in learning, the economic model for higher education and the relationship of industry and higher education.

Who on your campus is considering these changes? Who is planning for the many aspects of the implementation of the metaverse? Will your campus lead or follow, and what will be the implications of the difference between innovation leadership and trailing in this next step in the digital transformation of higher ed?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog.