What would I do? Well, you really need to change high-level management and re-think their worth and role. Some of that is, I believe, generational shift and that takes time. When people my age are Vice Chancellors I’m sure we’ll have a different view of how things might work. On the other hand, some of this change is going to happen by itself. We can already see this in the student body and in culture in general. So the question is really “how can we be active in this process of change?” rather than “how do we react to the change when it’s already too late?”.

Practically, it is possible within a faculty to do this. I think it’s pretty impossible to do at a school level because every has to do it otherwise it falls over. Some of the links I mentioned above have examples of this working.

We’ll have to disagree on “enthusiasm, like most other emotions, is muted by a staggering degree when not physically experienced by someone in the same room as you.” I’ve been involved in global online collaborative projects that have been brimming with enthusiasm (as well as smaller online courses). Think about a book you might have read that really shaped your thinking, or even an e-mail conversation. Those are both single mode forms of communication but incredibly powerful. Words and images are powerful.

As Steven Johnson argues, books, had they been invented after videogames might be regarded as isolating, single-sensory, non-stimulating experiences that are unhealthy for children.

It’s what you do with what you have that counts. It’s quite possible to be moved to tears by words, it’s quite possible to teach complex things online (COFA Online has a sculpture course, for example). The thing is to go back to basics and work out what your intention is. What is it that you want people to learn exactly? From that you can make decisions as to whether online, or lectures, or immersive workshops are appropriate or not.

The problem I have is that process doesn’t happen much, even though the ‘tick-boxes’ of filling in the policy forms tries to police it, they actually make it mindless (like the ‘Important Licensing Information’ that nobody reads when installing software or watching a DVD). These problems have the same root – that is seeing technology (and forms and policies are organisational technologies) as solutions, rather than options or tools to use.

Basket weaving (or Judo, or plate spinning) might need the physical presence. Who knows? Maybe not. At some point people must have thought that you couldn’t truly communicate by speaking into a plastic banana with lots of wires inside. Now we all have mobile versions. Maybe learning basket weaving with a master weaver from Laos who can’t afford to come to Australia might be great online.

On the other side is the diversity issue. If, in the current political/economic climate HE institutions cannot continue to offer what they have for the last 200 years, they need to re-think the model. Otherwise they’ll end up with a top 20 chart show of educational ‘hits’ (which has already happened). That’s no good either, particularly in a multi/interdisciplinary world of constant change. Diversity is an evolutionary safeguard against sudden change – universities risk being Dinosaurs.

(The talent rant isn’t on here in it’s entirety. Some parts of it are in this essay, which you may have already read).

One last point which is perhaps another whole essay in itself but you did touch on it in this one: building on my last point, how would you integrate online learning courses into this idea of mentoring rather than telling?

Let me break this down (for my own benifit as well as yours): I’m assuming that you are not talking about replacing face to face teaching with online teaching completely. (If you were I would have to say you would be seriously undervaluing human interaction in the fullest sense.)

Take your example of the basket weaving course (randomly I have actually done a basket weaving course). In something so practical, so -physical-, I feel that learning would be severly limited by online delivery. Even with full realtime views of the teacher and students learning how to weave a thread, there is simply no way to compensate for the ability to lean over and help someone physically. And, often it is through mistakes that we innovate. If I can’t see how someone else is doing something, the posilbilities of me innovating through shared ideas is cut down an enormous amount.

In the same vein I’ll go back to what I was saying about student motivation (or lack there of) – your point about passionate enthusiactic teachers making students more interested in their courses is very true and in a mentoring-type model as we have discussed, that becomes very important. However, I think that enthusiasm, like most other emotions, is muted by a staggering degree when not physically experienced by someone in the same room as you. Being enthused or inspired by someone is not only about their words, their voice, their gestures – it’s about nuance, tone, physicality, posture, smell and a hundred more, barely readable signs. Signs that humans have been taught to read intuitively since birth. For myself, a catalyst for a creative idea or an innovation is exactly the same thing. Someone says a phrase in a certain tone that reminds me of a smell from my childhood which connects with an idea I have been playing with in my head, etc, etc which provides me with the idea. Online mentoring can provide some of it, but with the technology we have avaliable to any education system in the forseeable future there is only provision to transmit a small part of that information (audio, visuals, text, etc.) So does that mean that only a small part of that potential for motivation, inspiration and innovation can be transmitted too?

I think it is education’s task (from pre-school upwards) to help people find their own path and mentoring is largely about helping people with their motivation. It’s often a process that requires both a knowledge of the area (obviously, that’s a given one would hope) as well as knowledge of how to motivate people psychologically. That’s a much harder part as it’s different for everyone.

The other thing is that you’re assuming that people who do art and design subjects do it out of passion and those that do business don’t. Part of this is a cultural conditioning about The Artist and I’ve ranted about the myth of talent elsewhere (which this feeds into). Good art and design is still hard work. At some point you have to work through the boring bits, work through the highly unmotivated hours of hard graft to bring your creative ideas to fruition. I can’t think of a single project I have done that hasn’t had some boring spots (some that went on for months). What gets you through those boring spots are experience and a genuine interest in what you do.

Someone doing accountancy or business still needs to be motivated to do it, even if that motivation might just be money, status or family pressure. Granted, those aren’t necessarily the most pleasant motivations, but they are pretty effective. That said, I would say that’s a minority of people (although that’s a bit higher in students I suspect).

Most people are interested in what they are doing – it’s hard to make it through three or fours years of a degree if you are totally bored (most people switch if that is the case). The world is an interesting place and someone knowledgeable and passionate about their subject who is a good communicator can make sure it is interesting for you. I, for example, find that numbers and mathematics really scramble my brain (I do better with words and visuals). On the other hand, someone like Ian Stewart) can give an amazing lecture (and write an excellent book) about the Magical Maze, which deals with how incredible mathematics is. You can find some other things like that here

All of the above is only half the point though. The real issue is that all these are interconnected. Obviously maths and coding and business are, but pretty much every cultural production process and everything that touches our living, emotional lives, is connected by this web of professions and disciplines. Places like Hyper Island in Sweden recognise the need to have people work across boundaries. You make a better designer if you have been a client or a manager, you make a better manager if you have been a designer. We make the mistake all the time of educating in pods or silos, but as we are seeing with the Web, that’s not how the world or people work. This is also why, for me, thinking about education as a sustainability issue makes sense because it takes in the whole system.

Some subjects work better with time in-between classes rather than say a week of workshops. On the other hand many, many deep learning experiences seem to come from that kind of immersion that a different structure provides. If, on the other hand, you mean the mentoring approach rather than the ‘chalk and talk’ approach, I feel this is pretty appropriate for almost everything in the contemporary world. Just transferring knowledge (which is hard enough to do anyway) isn’t enough and isn’t, in my opinion (and in the literature), the idea.

Obviously different modes of learning suit different people. I’m not suggesting lectures and tutes are totally scrapped, just to re-think them (and maybe scrap them if they don’t make sense).

A large point in the essay is less about changes in teaching styles than it is about organisational structure. With a more flexible structure you have more room to tailor the learning experience, but at present that is really difficult. On top of that, it is very difficult to engage in a truly collaborative and interdisciplinary project when all the admin structures prevent it.

Lastly, a lot of the changes in the way that people approach learning are already or are shortly going to be happening. People live their lives very differently to ten years ago, even, and the current generation of uni students radically so. Universities currently have no real plan to deal with this change beyond “more excellence in teaching” and taking on more students. That’s not a plan, that’s a reaction.