Much discussion in recent weeks about how to take advantage of the MOOC opportunity for STEM. For those of you not currently following the new buzzy acronyms, MOOC stands for Massive Open OnLine Courses (the craze sweeping the world and striking terror in the hearts of most college admins) and STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Some few places urge STEAM, adding Arts to the mix.
At the ACM Annual Awards Banquet last Saturday night (see my posts in innovascapes.blogspot.com) a major award was granted to Zvi Kedem of the Courant Institute for his efforts to rebuild the taxonomy for computer science, as "a modern cognitive map of the computing field" with thirteen subject domains, and 134 experts building core curriculum. This supplants a fifty-year old scaffold that has been seriously out of date for some time.
In engineering circles, the Stanford D'School, the Institute of Design, has broadened to twelve sharing institutions. The Point of View" pages on their website are poignant -- (1) the job is to build innovators, not to do innovation; (2) their way of working is to combine Technology, Business, and Human Values (now there's a radical concept!); (3) work on Real-World Projects (this is experience based learning, not book learning); and (4) RADICAL collaboration, across multiple disciplines, not just token collaboration.
Hasso Plattner, founder of SAP in Germany, has underwritten the d'school at Stanford, along with a sister group at Potsdam Univ.
But I would submit that there is more to it than these attempts. Curriculum-wise, there is the question about Big Data and Visual Displays, about Mathematics as seen and used at Google for example, about interactive collaboration at a distance ala the H.264 video technologies, about Social metrics and media, and about meaningful design, support, and use of Digital Media. And virtually no one teaches exponential growth except Singularity Univesity, even though Einstein described its as "the eighth wonder of the world."
The other question that goes begging is how to couple curricula with jobs, as the For-Profit colleges are discovering (thanks to what they call 'onerous government intrusion' with Gainful Employment goals). And in engineering, it would seem practical -- to me, at least -- that a consortium of companies could get together with some engineering colleges to certify what's needed, how to tell if it's mastered, etc.
For example, Cisco and its licensees have trained several million students in the past fifteen years to operate a communications network IST shop -- no university developed this, it was an industry need and initiative that drove it. Likewise, Qualcomm has trained a half million on IT needs for wireless.
Companies like HP, Intel, and IBM have for years had "corporate universities" for 'on-the-job' skills enhancement, usually done as updates for fast-moving fields or 'rehab' for older employees. My wife hired into HP to help develop a Computer Science curriculum for HP engineers in the mid-eighties; I am glad she came to HP to do so, for it gave me a chance to meet her and 'the rest is history'.
Odd as it may sound, corporate training groups spend way more on education than the universities. Why? What on? And how happy are they with the results?
The answers, when you seek them somewhat systematically, are troubling. Costs of traditional education are increasingly prohibitive, and the courses are increasingly seen as mere prelude, not helpful in the employer context (some say this has ever been thus). Newer fields are not handled well by most schools; corporate needs are different than research needs (which is what most faculty try to convey to their best students....). The list becomes daunting.
The prospective students, on the other hand, are a bit dispirited as well. Where are the jobs for what they're being taught? And how much in debt will they be? And why can't they apply the robotics MOOC course they just finished as partial credit toward their degree?
There has got to be room for, in fact a crying need for, a different approach. Stay tuned? Or, better yet, send your thoughts along.
No comments:
Post a Comment