School vs LMS - and the Victor is?
The Learning Management System, which will almost certainly replace the school is the primary paradigm for higher education.
Education up until the present day has been associated with: schools (teacher / student) and workshops (master / apprentice).
Some combination of school-place and work-place is characteristic of university based professional education. But the problems with this system are becoming obvious. First, as is always the case in social/political systems teachers and masters vie with one another for power and influence in the system. And those political struggles played out in competition between courses offered, hiring practices, degree requirements, and resources for research become a constant and growing drag on the overall system.
As importantly the school-place/work-place model deeply privileges those who permanently inhabit those spaces, that is the teachers and masters. It disempowers the students, the learners, who have little or no control over what they learn and how they learn it.
Educators need to realize that increasingly the user will determine the use of what they offer, and will dictate the acceptable forms through which they will learn.
In other words the LMS is organized not around the teacher-student/master-apprentice relationship, but around the relationship between the student and what the student needs or wishes to learn. The teacher, to use the common expression, becomes the "guide on the side" rather than the "sage on the stage." But with the demand that teachers guide 10's or hundreds of students it is likely that we'll at least in part be learning managers as well as mentors.
Either way, standing on a stage and talking will be a diminishing mode of eduation, as sitting and listening will be a diminishing mode of learning
The LMS as an organizing principle will displace the school-place work-place model not only because it focuses on the learner, the user, but also because it is far more flexible than schools or workplaces, whether the classrooms are virtual or physical. The LMS offers a far wider variety of relationships than those of teacher/student, master/apprentice, and a far wider range of engagements with material learned. And it offers them via online media to far more people at far less cost.
As a result what are now schools will become learning management systems within which classrooms (school), workshops (work), and faculty (teacher/master) may or may not play a role. Administration will abide, although many aspects of it will be handled by Artificial Intelligences.
Eventually the LMS will be detached entirely from the maintenance of existing institutional interests such as maintaining a faculty, buildings, student housing, community life, and extra-curricular activities. Indeed this is already happening. Only if these physical and social aspects of a traditional school contribute toward the LMS goal(s) as defined by the learners and contribute revenue to maintain the LMS will they survive.
Because the school as LMS can exist as easily, and indeed more easily in a virtual space rather than a physical space its emergence will be driven by how quickly virtual spaces become effectively available world-wide. And with the exception of exceptional places (SMU for example), the rise of virtual spaces will spell the doom of many college campuses that are neither convenient nor charming aspects of the LMS. Already one can assemble students in a VR space far nicer and more humane than the soulless classrooms of most modern university. Will a VR campus be next? Of course, they are already in the offing.
Only two things will temper the growth of the LMS as the key paradigm for education:
1. The as yet unknown extent to which certain learning goals can only be met absent face-to-face, and thus through purely local interactions. We don’t yet know how to balance real and virtual relationships to meet learning goals. Nor have we established the boundary between real and virtual. Is it between physical and digital, or somewhere along a spectrum between AI avatar and real human. Finding out is the next critical area for pedagogical research.
2. Cultural factors that vary widely from group to group and region to region. Western universities have steadily eroded the teacher-student relationship by focusing on hiring faculty whose inclination and abilities are focused on research rather than teaching. And the individualism characteristic of the North Atlantic cultures only magnify this tendency for teacher/student relationships to be temporally sporadic and emotionally disengaged. However, there are cultures, some of which inhabit Europe and North American, in which both students and teachers put a high value on personal relationships in a physical space. Defining these cultural factors in relationship to education specifically is a second key area for pedagogical research.
One thing seems certain regardless of cultural factors - the long association of teaching and research in graduate theological schools will be broken by the rise of the LMS, and new paradigms for both must emerge.
We almost always say "I'm going to school." We almost never say "I'm going to learn." That's because the place; school, and the activity; learning have been synonymous for thousands of years. That is changing rapidly as a new paradigm for education emerges: the learning management system.
The school paradigm focuses on a place where teachers meet students as the organizing principle of education, with the classroom and its activities being put the more specific location. The learning management system focuses on learning goals by managing the student's learning experience. This which may or may not require classrooms, classes, and teachers and may have many other forms of engagement with whatever is being learned.
This shift in paradigm away from school as a place for learning toward learning goals managed by an LMS will powerfully shape the future of education. Goal oriented learners even now are looking for ways to achieve their goals rather than looking for spaces in which to learn. Institutions and teachers who understand themselves within this new paradigm will succeed as goal oriented learners seek out the opportunities they offer and value the excellence of their learning management systems.
Education up until the present day has been associated with: schools (teacher / student) and workshops (master / apprentice).
Some combination of school-place and work-place is characteristic of university based professional education. But the problems with this system are becoming obvious. First, as is always the case in social/political systems teachers and masters vie with one another for power and influence in the system. And those political struggles played out in competition between courses offered, hiring practices, degree requirements, and resources for research become a constant and growing drag on the overall system.
As importantly the school-place/work-place model deeply privileges those who permanently inhabit those spaces, that is the teachers and masters. It disempowers the students, the learners, who have little or no control over what they learn and how they learn it.
As our society is shifting rapidly into a culture in which the user rather than the provider is central to the design of everything from automobiles to health care systems this marginalization of the learner becomes socially unacceptable. Students simply will not enroll in programs that do not meet their needs, and in higher education, where a diminishing number of students have an increasing number of options those who marginalize student learning goals simply cannot succeed.
This is particularly true in theological education, where those called into ministry are less tied to the credentialing processes demanded by failing denominations and are more inclined to seek out opportunities for unique ministries.
Educators need to realize that increasingly the user will determine the use of what they offer, and will dictate the acceptable forms through which they will learn.
The advent as the internet as a medium through which student learning experiences are made available and managed toward the student's learning goals only heightens these changes. In the future higher education will be moved out of the school-place/work-place nexus as various forms of highly demanded online education become ubiquitous. And as has already happened, the paradigm of learning management system, well adapted to this new medium, will become the central organizing principle of higher education.
The LMS is not, I note, a mere “virtual classroom." Virtual classroom is simply a name for the old organizing principle translated into a series of clunky interfaces electronically mediated. Nor is it merely a "flipped classroom." The LMS ultimately displaces the classroom paradigm altogether and rebuilds around the concept of learning goals rather than place or ultimately even person. The LMS as a concept is as relevant to training artificial intelligences as it is humans, and indeed is already being so used.
In other words the LMS is organized not around the teacher-student/master-apprentice relationship, but around the relationship between the student and what the student needs or wishes to learn. The teacher, to use the common expression, becomes the "guide on the side" rather than the "sage on the stage." But with the demand that teachers guide 10's or hundreds of students it is likely that we'll at least in part be learning managers as well as mentors.
Either way, standing on a stage and talking will be a diminishing mode of eduation, as sitting and listening will be a diminishing mode of learning
The LMS as an organizing principle will displace the school-place work-place model not only because it focuses on the learner, the user, but also because it is far more flexible than schools or workplaces, whether the classrooms are virtual or physical. The LMS offers a far wider variety of relationships than those of teacher/student, master/apprentice, and a far wider range of engagements with material learned. And it offers them via online media to far more people at far less cost.
As a result what are now schools will become learning management systems within which classrooms (school), workshops (work), and faculty (teacher/master) may or may not play a role. Administration will abide, although many aspects of it will be handled by Artificial Intelligences.
Eventually the LMS will be detached entirely from the maintenance of existing institutional interests such as maintaining a faculty, buildings, student housing, community life, and extra-curricular activities. Indeed this is already happening. Only if these physical and social aspects of a traditional school contribute toward the LMS goal(s) as defined by the learners and contribute revenue to maintain the LMS will they survive.
Beyond this the rise of the LMS paradigm will make learning increasingly modular. Rather than a degree or certificate it will be a course or even a fraction of a course that will become the basic unit of learning. This is already happening with the current system of course transfers. It is noteworthy that schools that long protected their product by only allowing a limited number of transfer credits now allow more and more as they seek out students.
As schools are transformed into LMSes accreditation will become the accreditation of courses which is effectively what we have with the credit transfer system. We already see this happening as accrediting agencies examine every single course offering for compliance with its norms. Ultimately accrediting agencies will grant degrees, since it is only their accreditation that gives the degrees value. Traditional schools will create and offer students accredited courses rather than degrees.
Global competition between courses will quickly put an end to mediocre or worse teaching/learning opportunities. The best courses; the teaching they encapsulate and learning they facilitate will be reproduced digitally for no additional marginal cost so there will be no need for a teaching/learning experience that isn’t either of high quality or unique (probably highly local) in content. Again we see this with the rise of Massive Online Open Courses offered by premier instutitions with rock star teachers. And with the rapid rise of aggregators of courses such as Coursera, EdX, and etc.
Given the variety of learning goals and the choices of learning experiences, to the extent that the teacher/learner relationship is desired it will be met by those teachers who are engaging and effective guides through the learning process. The relatively few students who find a crusty anti-social professor interesting or entertaining may learn through watching lectures by the best in the world. Most will seek out true tutors and mentors who care for them and their personal learning goals or can at least competently advise them on how to make best use of what is available.
Advising, now a task foisted off on junior faculty and low paid employees will become the most important asset a university can offer. Ultimately independent educational advisors will emerge (and their AI counterparts) to guide students toward those learning experiences that meet the student's learning goals, not least monetization.
Because the school as LMS can exist as easily, and indeed more easily in a virtual space rather than a physical space its emergence will be driven by how quickly virtual spaces become effectively available world-wide. And with the exception of exceptional places (SMU for example), the rise of virtual spaces will spell the doom of many college campuses that are neither convenient nor charming aspects of the LMS. Already one can assemble students in a VR space far nicer and more humane than the soulless classrooms of most modern university. Will a VR campus be next? Of course, they are already in the offing.
Only two things will temper the growth of the LMS as the key paradigm for education:
1. The as yet unknown extent to which certain learning goals can only be met absent face-to-face, and thus through purely local interactions. We don’t yet know how to balance real and virtual relationships to meet learning goals. Nor have we established the boundary between real and virtual. Is it between physical and digital, or somewhere along a spectrum between AI avatar and real human. Finding out is the next critical area for pedagogical research.
2. Cultural factors that vary widely from group to group and region to region. Western universities have steadily eroded the teacher-student relationship by focusing on hiring faculty whose inclination and abilities are focused on research rather than teaching. And the individualism characteristic of the North Atlantic cultures only magnify this tendency for teacher/student relationships to be temporally sporadic and emotionally disengaged. However, there are cultures, some of which inhabit Europe and North American, in which both students and teachers put a high value on personal relationships in a physical space. Defining these cultural factors in relationship to education specifically is a second key area for pedagogical research.
One thing seems certain regardless of cultural factors - the long association of teaching and research in graduate theological schools will be broken by the rise of the LMS, and new paradigms for both must emerge.
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