The Deconstructed Campus (Abstract)
Four converging trends are undermining land-based campuses as the preeminent source of both knowledge acquisition and certification. The emergence of the learning sciences, the wikification of knowledge, the unbundling of faculty roles, and the migration of learning online are driving fundamental institutional change toward location-independent alternatives. Conventional assumptions about the necessity for, and superiority of, location-dependent instructional practices at colleges and universities are losing their plausibility as learning is transformed by more effective alternatives offering more precise and scientifically grounded optimizations embedded in Web-based course architectures. The combination of precision education, open courseware, the greater specialization of teaching roles and the expansion of Web-enabled learning are all implicated in a process leading toward the decentralization of institutional practices supporting land-based instruction. These trends are not only disruptive but are serving to displace the traditional role of post-secondary institutions as the primary providers of knowledge and academic credentials. The relevance of these trends can be understood within the framework of Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive decentralization but with the qualification that precision education rather than facilitated networks is the impetus for the next phase of disruptive innovation in education.
Manuscript draft: available on request
