Tag Archives: higher education

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An Ode to Content & First Thoughts on Adapt Courseware

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Remarkably little attention is paid to the quality of digital instructional content in higher ed. In fact, if you were to read the work of writers from the educational technology guild in 2012, you might be led to believe that content is largely irrelevant in this digital age; it’s now all about access and connectivity.

I think there is a desire to imagine ourselves somehow “past” and “above” content. In this age of ubiquitous information, we proclaim that universities are now primarily learning spaces/environments/platforms/(fill-in-the-blanks). But this is not the case. To a large extent, the university model in North America and elsewhere still revolves around content.

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IanBarker

Ian Barker of Symtext: The Education Entrepreneur’s Experience

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KCH: In a post I wrote earlier this year, I suggested that higher education needs to develop “content strategies”. As the sources of content becomes more varied, and the opportunities to reduce costs greater, the need for a coherent institutional strategy for acquiring, financing and managing content becomes more important. From your vantage point, do you see any evidence of this approach to content emerging in higher education? Is leadership on content strategy coming from individual academics, bookstores, libraries?

We see direct and growing evidence of organized thinking around content management. It’s a crucial point: the extent to which schools want to implement and manage multiple platforms from multiple publishers is limited. The challenge, it seems to me, lies in institutions implementing enabling technologies while allowing faculty free reign over materials selection. So, “coordinated”, but not “centralized”.

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