A New Architecture for Learning

• Published in: EDUCAUSE review Vol. 48; no. 5; pp. 88 - 95
• Main Authors: Abel, Rob, Brown, Malcolm, Suess, Jack
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDUCAUSE 2013
• Subjects: Computer Uses in Education; Educational Change; Educational Innovation; Electronic Learning; Higher Education; Information Technology; Technology Integration
• ISSN: 1527-6619

Higher education, is entering a period in which it is the "connections" between everything and everyone that are of importance. This development is most conspicuous in teaching and learning and is enabled by information technology, social media, and mobile devices. This advent of "connected learning" is having an impact on all colleges and universities, faculty, and students. However, the authors describe an arena where many campus IT organizations are viewed not as partners for but rather as barriers to academic innovation. In a similar vein, the challenges in relationships between institutions and suppliers in terms of the fears of getting "locked in" or charged exorbitant license fees have led to a variety of open-source and institutional-led product alternatives. In short, the new IT architecture needs to enable an instructional environment in which technology "gets out of the way" and becomes highly supportive of teachers' and students' needs. Specifically, this new open architecture for connected learning needs to support and enable unprecedented agility, flexibility, and personalization. "Agility", in the IT context, means a focus on quick deployment and integration, "Flexibility," means building a catalog of services, or "educational apps," so that instructors can mix and match tools from a wide array of sources (i.e., traditional vendors, instructors, institutions, open sources) to best support their pedagogical goals, and "Personalization" means allowing faculty (and potentially students) to easily combine diverse sets of tools. If higher education is to support students and faculty as connected learners and instructors, they must rethink their approach to academic technology architecture. At the foundation and core of that architecture is information technology, in its role as the strategic enabler of connected learning.