The Top 10 Ways to strategize virtual universities

Originally Submitted on 5/28/97.

A virtual university must abandon most aspects of classroom delivery systems. Formulating any strategy requires intense scrutiny of assumptions and creation of new rules to play by. These are the top ten issues I use to sharpen people's thinking about viable, virtual universities.

1. Replacing content-models of learning

Content models claim that people learn by being told or shown information. Context models picture learners as self-taught. The emphasis shifts from what they are given to remember to what they do with the ideas in their own mental models. Retention is portrayed as "use it or lose it" instead of the outcome of "drill and practice" exercises. Educational value is then induced or co-created with the learner, not delivered in a linear fashion.

2. Implementing a coach approach to instruction

An instructor informs. A coach guides a learner to self-realizations. A teacher covers the material. A coach connects concepts to the learners own situation and previous understandings. A teacher can mass produce superficial learning without any interest in the uniqueness of each student. A coach uses the learner's uniqueness as leverage to bring about new insights.

3. Designing an open framework delivery system

A delivery system needs a substantial discovery component for the patrons to not feel like "pawns in the system". A vision based on listening to the customer raises continual questions to ask every new patron. The impression that the system really responds to customers stirs up "possibility thinking" in patrons and expands the value they want to extract from the offerings.

4. Transitioning the content junkies

Survivors of content- model delivery systems are passive learners who get stuck in the idea stage. Breaking their addiction to pseudo-learning requires compassion and empathy. The delivery of knowledge needs to restore their processes of interpretation, digestion orassimilation. Getting learners to come up with their own insights helps. Learners lose their fixation on content as they expand their knowledge from knowing what/knowing how to include knowing why/ knowing how to balance an idea and its opposite.

5. Cultivating creative developers

Most course developers feel hampered by the constraints of seat-time and the limited abilities of the learners. They react to circumstances instead of creating new opportunities. Instructors end up feeling drained and disoriented by the program they thought they would enjoy teaching. It seems they have created a monster with insatiable needs. Virtual instructional environments offer an appealing escape fantasy to prisoners of stand-up delivery; until they face the same problem on-line that plagued them before. The only way out is to get creative and see the entire problem in a new light.

6. Motivating the distant learners

The biggest problems in distant learning are motivation, drop outs and minimal student efforts. The social pressures to keep up are absent. The distractions from the learning tasks are more imposing. Getting buy-in to the challenge posed by an education program takes a turnaround from conventional motivational strategies. When students are put in the driver's seat: controlling the flow, speed, depth and difficulty of their experience, motivation is not a problem. Giving this much control/power to students occurs in "cake courses" with no pressure and in self-directed learning where the learner pressures him/herself.

7. Mapping the hyper-linked domains of knowledge

It is easy to get lost when given a choice of where to go next. It's impossible to show all the possible routes through a complex web of linkages. It becomes essential to offer recommended routes or guideposts at important intersections. It also helps the learners' levels of confidence and curiosity to keep track of where they've been and how it all inter-relates.

8. Enhancing student self-assessments

Students have been hypnotized to evaluate their academic performance in discouraging ways. We've all been taught to ask ourselves "was that good?" and "how good was that?' Both questions are normative, dependent on outside authorities and a set-up for uniform compliance. Questions of "how was that good?" and "how does that serve my authentic Self?" reverse the toxic effect of normative evaluation. There's a lot of learning about oneself that is needed to answer those healthier questions.

9. Attracting players at this level

To attract people who can play at the level of creating a virtual university, its necessary to provide for the full range of customers. If four levels are offered, people who fit with a lower level can work their way up inside the delivery system. The entry level players may remain involved superficially or realize they could "take their game up a level". Each level would offer an increment of the privilege to "write your own ticket". By offering four levels, the top level is pictured as a prize, something earned or a significant accomplishment to work toward.

10. Practicing congruence

We learn more from how we are taught than what we are taught. Actions speak louder than words. The way we are treated makes a bigger impression that what we are treated to. The person who walks his/her talk makes a more convincing impression on us that someone who sounds impressive. Any virtual university will prosper in proportion to its congruence. Continual self-examination to replace contradictions with closure will bring greater congruence about in time.

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