A “Pixar” Model for the Creation of Educational Materials in a Digital World1

Thomas D. LairsonGelbman Professor of International Business

Professor of Political ScienceRollins College

Prepared for presentation at the NITLE Symposium: Inventing the FutureArlington, Virginia – April 16-17, 2012

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.William Gibson

AbstractDeveloping innovative digital education materials, incorporating all of the engaging value that digitization can offer and promoting complex analytical and intellectual sensibilities in students, is the main barrier to achieving the disruptive innovations many have anticipated from online education. At the same time, developing these materials is unlikely without significant disruptive innovation within the content creation value chain. This paper provides a conceptualization of these changes by developing the “Pixar” model, based on the digital business model of Steve Jobs at Pixar and Apple. The Pixar model provides the gold standard for successful operation within the world of digital business and establishes a path for likely change within the arena of digital education, including for liberal arts colleges.

The Pixar model consists of a willingness to break existing product and business model molds by using cutting edge digital capabilities, a refusal to be bound by many existing industry standards, an intersection of content – what Jobs referred to as art - and technology, defining new product categories and redefining existing product categories, an obsession with quality, defining new business models by leveraging distributed knowledge creation capabilities, and exploiting the extremely low marginal cost of a digital product. Liberal arts colleges will need to embark on self-disruption to adapt to this new world, with Pixar-like thinking relating to entrepreneurship, reconfiguring incentives, load definitions and skill sets for faculty and technologists alike, integrate students into the content creation process, embrace a trial and error process of change, engage in radical experimentation with existing models of time and space for courses to adapt to new digital educational materials, link into new value chains for digital educational materials, and leverage their approach to ideas, learning, thinking and education into the digital age.

High quality digital educational materials, some of which already exist, must meet the best standards of education, by enhancing engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective and values-clarifying, decision-making, and information-evaluation learning. To do this, such materials must be highly engaging, visually compelling, interactive over a range and depth of intellectual activities, embed unobtrusive testing and capture results, with differentiated levels of competence and achievement. Examples for a “course” on U.S.-China relations could include AI-based interactive 3D virtual environments with SIRI-like input and response capabilities. These can be built around developing simulation environments of various forms of economic, political and military interaction that challenge students to understand relationships and scenarios. GIS-based layered maps with complex and embedded links to text and multimedia information will serve as the basis for a variety of game-like activities for exploring alternative scenarios in the U.S.-China relationship.

Development of these materials will have three very significant effects on higher education. The materials will make the case for a large expansion of online education and thereby promote new forms for education. Second, the organization that creates educational materials will have a competitive advantage in taking the lead in providing the education itself. Third, failure of liberal arts faculty and staff to play a key role in the development and use of these materials will lead to

1 Special thanks to Dr. Gary Williams and Dr. Kenna Taylor for their comments on this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.

severe disadvantages. Liberal arts colleges can self-disrupt and end up much stronger, adapt a little and end up a shell of themselves, or react poorly and end up as a historical memory.

Introduction

The online and digital worlds greatly alter time and space as constraints on education, opening up new opportunities to change the ways we define and practice the educational process.2 But much of this depends on redefining the nature and process of developing new kinds of educational materials for this world. Traditionally, most educational materials have been books, most of which are written by academics for a particular course. This book may have one or two authors (more if edited) who produce more or less the same kinds of materials: words and maybe a graph (perhaps an equation). These days many books will also have a website with more words and some links and more frequently books are digitized as e-books.

What is remarkable is how little we have been able to break the “book” mold3 and generate genuinely innovative interactive and multimedia learning experiences for university students. The limitations on book innovation are connected to the limitations on university innovation. This has just begun to change with options such as Inkling and the iBooks textbook and more generally with some e-books.4 Even more innovative options, such as scenario-based training, virtual world simulations, video game-like interactive environments and the like are largely found in specialized firms whose clients are large corporations. A few universities and liberal arts colleges have models of innovation in digital materials worth emulating. But mostly, universities and colleges are left with Powerpoint-like options directed toward pre-collegiate students. Compellingly rich, complex, and challenging virtual environments for collegiate education are possible but mostly don’t exist or exist in embryonic form because we lack the conceptualization, resources and organizations for their creation. Most important, the development of a digital education world will mean more changes than we have thus far imagined. This will be harder than we

2 Thomas D. Lairson, “Rethinking the ‘Course’ in an Online World,” Campus-Wide Information Systems, 16.5, (1999) 186-190. For data on online courses, see “Six Online Learning Trends,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Charts-6-Online-Learning/129634/ 3 See The Institute for the Future of the Book, http://www.futureofthebook.org/ and http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory2.0/ The minimal changes in the university are considered by Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.4 Inkling can be found at: http://www.inkling.com/ ; iBooks is at: http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/ ; Lynn Neary, “At Last, They See: E-Books Democratize Publishing,” National Public Radio, February 19, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/147112456/e-books-flipping-the-page-on-publishing-standards ; Peter Meyer, Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience, O’Reilly Media, 2011, identifies many digital enhancements to the “book.” The Economist, “Enhanced E-books: Truly Moving Literature,” February 21, 2012, http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/02/enhanced-e-books

think and more consequential than we have realized. But, we may be at a tipping point for the creation of a vast array of innovative digital educational media.

Getting from here to there will require transformations in organization, conceptualization and business model. We will need to think in a genuinely interdisciplinary fashion: drawing on analysis from business, technology and pedagogy, we will need entrepreneurship animated by imagination to grasp the opportunities in digital learning. To help understand these possibilities, this paper conceptualizes this set of disruptive innovations as a “Pixar” model, based on the extraordinary capabilities first created at Apple, then expanded at Pixar then transported back to and expanded yet again at Apple.

The description of a Pixar model for academia helps to identify just how far we are from being able to achieve a digital education. We consider the various components of this model in terms of creating the environment needed to develop truly innovative digital educational materials. This is illustrated with an example of such materials – focused on understanding the relationship between the United States and China – and the kinds of resources – personnel and otherwise – required for their creation. The paper describes some of the interactive digital materials that could be developed and integrated to permit students to think deeply about this subject. It then considers the kinds of organization and people needed to develop these capabilities and speculates about how and whether creating such teams might be possible within a liberal arts college setting.

Based on the application of the Pixar model, three main propositions will be developed and defended. First, high quality digital educational materials will play a key role in the transformation of the process of education. These materials will make the case for a much larger online component for education by creating activities that substantially enhance the capacity to promote the goals of a liberal education: engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective, values clarifying, decision-making, information-evaluation learning. Locating these materials in an online space will propel changes in education relating to time, space and process that break with the 12th century model of education tied to agricultural seasons and physical environments. Second, the greatest uncertainty is the source of these materials. Whether faculty and others from liberal arts colleges will play a key role in the development and even use of these materials is unclear. Only with substantial change in attitude and organization can this happen. Third, the organization that creates educational materials will have a competitive advantage in taking the lead in providing the education itself. The initial point of disruptive innovation in the coming years is not the college or university but at the level of creating digital educational materials themselves. Other disruptions will flow from control over the creation and application of these materials.

The pathway forward will come only by transforming the institutional order for educational content, content creation and the organization of education.5 This direction can be understood through the Pixar model of disruptive innovation, as developed by Steve Jobs and the firms he created. Jobs is reported to have turned his attention to disrupting the world of textbooks just before he died.6 This paper applies some of the ideas of “Jobsian” disruption – in the realms of organization, technology, content creation and business model – to the process of developing collegiate educational materials for a digital world. I term this the Pixar Model, as a way of defining not only how relationships in education must change to accommodate this world but also how education itself will likely be disrupted by these changes. To this point, what has largely held back the effects of a digital world on education is not the hardware of the Internet or the computer but the lack of compelling and truly innovative software. The iPad is just a curiosity without the apps; so too, achieving the new world of digital education and the disruption it portends awaits compelling digital content, that itself awaits a new system of content creation. If this is to take place on the terrain of the college and university and not in a completely new and perhaps distributed environment, it will require new kinds of capabilities from “faculty” able to adjust to the complex connections needed.

I. The Pixar Model of Disruptive Innovation7

Steve Jobs had many serious weaknesses, as a person and as a manager. As one person put it, “I am a recovering assaholic. So I could recognize that in Steve.”8 But at some level, his obsessiveness and difficulties may have been the source for the keen insights into how to understand and succeed in the digital business world.9 This did not come at first, as many important failures and years of trial and error were needed to get it right, including understanding the real value of the Pixar company Jobs purchased.

What he eventually “got right” was the creation of a model for operating in the digital business world, a model I am calling the “Pixar Model,” for it was at Pixar10 that this system of business, creation and technology first began to congeal.

5 For an apocalyptic vision of the effects of online education, see Megan McArdle, “Envisioning a Post-Campus America,” The Atlantic, February 13, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/envisioning-a-post-campus-america/253032/ and Joseph King and Michael Nanfito, “A Potential Academic Future,” Inside Higher Ed, February 9, 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/09/essay-imagines-future-academe 6 Isaacson, Walter (2011) Steve Jobs, New York: Simon & Schuster, Kindle Edition, 508-509. This direction seems confirmed http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/apple-aims-to-take-on-the-textbook-market/?partner=yahoofinance 7 Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Harper Business, 2011.8 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Edition, 185.9 Walter Issacson, “The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, April 2012, http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/1 10 The Pixar story can be found at: Tom Hormby, (January 22, 2007). "The Pixar Story: Fallon Forbes, Dick Shoup, Alex Schure, George Lucas and Disney" . In addition, see Issacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle

The model was later carried back to Apple and reapplied over and over and perfected to transform Apple in fifteen years from near-death to (at least for a time) the most valuable company in the world.11 And this Pixar model helps us understand what needs to happen for effective content creation for a digital education revolution.

The main components of the Pixar model include:

A willingness to break existing product and business model molds, specifically by using cutting edge digital capabilities. As Jobs certainly understood, these capabilities would not only rapidly fall in price; they also had many fungible features that provided leverage into additional capabilities. An example is the inclusion of electronic versions of an Oxford dictionary and the complete works of Shakespeare a pioneering use of digital content to sell hardware.12

A determination to fight against industry standards until it worked. The dominant design for the personal computer industry was established by the Wintel system that provided the core of the IBM PC: hardware and software were outsourced to separate firms and integrated to create an industry standard. For Jobs, these elements had to be integrated into one firm and made (somewhat) incompatible with other systems. This counterintuitive position eventually turned the industry upside down when this capability made it possible for Apple to define the post-PC world through its control of both the hardware and software.13

Pixar was the intersection of content – what Jobs referred to as art - and technology. Pixar was important not only for its appealing and popular animated films but also for its technology – RenderMan. In this sense, the people operating Pixar had to work assiduously to establish the idea of linking technology to content and then to make the fusion into a viable business plan. This intersection of technology and art was pushed to the point that it transformed the movie industry, not the last time this would

Edition, Chapter 19.11 The Pixar model focuses on the business model for a digital world. A very different sense of the sources of Apple’s success can be found in Adam Lashinsky, Inside Apple, Business Plus, 2012. We should remember that when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. 12 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Ed. 223-25.13 Michael Cusumano, “Technology Strategy and Management: The Legacy of Steve Jobs,” Communications of the ACM, 54.12 (December 2011) 26-28. Isaacson, (2011), Kindle Ed. 335. Jonny Evans, “The PC is Dying: The iPad and Mac Are Not,” Computerworld, January 26, 2012, http://blogs.computerworld.com/19642/the_pc_is_dying_the_ipad_and_mac_are_not?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2012-01-26 ; Miles Giles, “Beyond the PC,” The Economist, October 8, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/21531109 . The ability to leverage hardware and software is what explains Google’s decision to buy the mobile phone business of Motorola. Of course, Apple has an unmatched array of products that leverage hardware and software. Knowledge@Wharton, “Vertical Integration Works for Apple – But It Won’t for Everyone,” March 14, 2012, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2959

happen, and it was a result of an obsession with doing it right and a refusal to settle for second best. This began with Toy Story.14

An ability to define new categories of consumer products, usually by creating new products and markets where none existed or recreating existing products and markets in entirely new terms. This came with the Apple II, the Macintosh operating system, the NeXT operating system, and most clearly with the computer animated movie, the iPod, iTunes, iTunes store, the Apple store, the computer as digital hub, the App store, the iPhone and the iPad. The innovation in these products and services came from a readiness to think beyond existing products and markets and craft products that would lead consumers and markets into new spaces. But it also involved understanding markets that were full of poor products and redefining them with high quality products.

An obsession with quality, be it in the content, the software or product design or in the people who worked for Pixar or Apple, combined with an obsession with simplicity and the quality this can bring to products.

Creating new business models by leveraging the distributed systems created by the networked digital world and linking this to the integrated systems of technology and content that create platforms for distributed systems. Apple has been able to define a new ecosystem for production of digital products, combining physical products and digital products in highly creative ways.15 The iTunes store and the App store are the best examples. Here the iPhone, iPod and iPad are platforms that facilitate the distributed creation of content via music, books, and various media forms contained in Apps. The value of the iPhone, iPod and iPad come from the extraordinary diversity of capabilities that come from the legions of content creators. Beneath this is a system of software and hardware modularity that supports and facilitates this distributed process.

A deep understanding of the way digital business alters the relationship between average cost and marginal cost and the business model opportunities this presents. The marginal cost for creating and delivering the next copy of a digital product is always close to zero. When this product is linked to enhancing a particular physical product, the best strategy is to charge a low price for the digital product in order to drive the sales of the physical product. The price of a digital copy of a physical product must also be decoupled from the price of a physical copy and tied much closer to the marginal price of the digital copy. This creates two business advantages: First, it builds a critical mass of digital products, which permits profits from the extremely large economies of scale of digital products. Second, this

14 David Price, The Pixar Touch, New York: Knopf, 2008; Daniel Terdiman, “With Pixar, Steve Jobs Changed the Film Industry Forever,” C/Net News, October 6, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20116912-37/with-pixar-steve-jobs-changed-the-film-industry-forever/ ; Austin Bunn, “Welcome to Planet Pixar, Wired, June 2004, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/pixar.html 15 Ron Adler and Rahul Kapoor, “Value Creation in Innovation Ecosystems,” Strategic Management Journal, 31 (2010) 306-333.

permits very large advantages to accrue to the linked physical product, making its value rise.16

This set of seven elements to the Pixar model captures the key features of what propelled Apple (and Pixar) to great success. More important, it defines the key features of a digital business model that we can use to evaluate the evolving world of digital education. One passage from the Issacson biography of Jobs provides a good statement of many of the aspects of the Pixar model:

[T]he iPod became the essence of everything Apple was destined to be: poetry connected to engineering, arts and creativity intersecting with technology, design that’s bold and simple. It had an ease of use that came from being an integrated end-to-end system, from computer to FireWire to device to software to content management. When you took an iPod out of the box, it was so beautiful that it seemed to glow, and it made all other music players look as if they had been designed and manufactured in Uzbekistan.17

Of course, beyond the beauty was a remarkable set of generalized and specialized capabilities along with an ease and flexibility of use. The Pixar model is about breaking the mold of existing digital products through a combination of compelling content, a simplicity and beauty of design, with an extraordinary range of interactive and innovative products, all defined by technology and made possible by an innovation in organization.

II. The Pixar Model and The Emerging Digital Value Chain

The Pixar model defines a kind of “gold standard” for business models in a digital world. How can this be applied to the as-yet unformed world of digital educational materials for university students? In simple terms, the Pixar model establishes a point of attraction, a place to aim, and a set of ideals that can define a future path for those who believe in the value of truly innovative digital education. The Pixar model provides a point of comparison for imagining the kinds of intellectual and organizational features needed to create this digital educational environment. Whether this can happen so as to strengthen or weaken the liberal arts college remains to be seen.

16 This explains why the business model for iBooks is to set the price for the digital book at $15. It is only feasible when the value chain includes both an iPad/iPhone and the digital book. Moreover, a split of the iBook price of 30% to Apple and 70% to the content creator can work even if it is so different from the traditional 15% to the content creator of a physical book. This system also works best using a distributed model of content creation. Knowledge@Wharton, “Textbook Case: Apple and Others Strive to Be the Next Wave in Educational Publishing,” February 15, 2012, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2944 17 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Edition, 393.

The Pixar model will define the business environment for the development of digital educational media. First, and perhaps most important, is the close connection between hardware and software – in this case, between the device and the content. Just as with iTunes and the iPad/iPhone, the business model that will dominate must integrate device(s) and content. As a result, the device and the content will co-evolve in quality and capabilities. This is why the three major players in this competition will be Apple, Amazon and perhaps Barnes and Noble18, and this also explains why all three now compete with a unique combination of device and content.19 Content providers that operate closely through a distributed network tied to one or all of these integrated systems will have a chance of success by their presence in these value chains. This can include existing publishers – dramatically restructured – but also the well-supported and redefined content providers in a university or college.20

The institutional affiliation of future content providers – if any – is unclear but has significant consequences. Why is it important for professors to be the creators? Why not just let specialists create and professors apply? Why do creators of digital materials need to be users of these materials? The answer – aside from professors being the content experts – is that new materials will require new pedagogy, the creation of which will come hand in hand with a trial and error process in the “classroom.” There is also a very good chance the best creators of digital educational materials, especially the aggregators, will also assume the role of teachers. Users need to be creators because such a synergy offers great advantages over specialization – development time and upgrades are shorter and the user can tailor and redefine materials in near real time. Thus, the creator-user amalgam will have significant competitive advantages in delivering the engaging educational experience. This is why the point of disruption of existing education will be the digital materials used to create a digital education.21

18 Julie Bosman, “The Bookstore’s Last Stand, New York Times, January 28, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/business/barnes-noble-taking-on-amazon-in-the-fight-of-its-life.html?_r=1&hpw 19 And this explains why successful tablets will need to link technology to quality content.20 The price of digital educational materials, following the notion of near-zero marginal costs, should be quite low, but with variable pricing based on the complexity of the materials. Modular pieces of a “book” can be priced very low while complex and integrated systems may be priced higher. This is analogous to the pricing of apps for the iPad/iPhone. The current price competition between Amazon and Apple, emerging from the government suit over agency pricing by Apple, is a manifestation of this very low marginal cost for digital products. This price competition will, in the near to long term, considerably reduce the role of traditional publishers and contribute to the creation of a new digital value chain, with a potentially large role for liberal arts colleges. David Streitfeld, “Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon is Set to Shake Rivals,” New York Times, April 11, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/business/media/amazon-to-cut-e-book-prices-shaking-rivals.html?_r=1&hp 21 Clayton Christensen, a highly regarded analyst of disruptive innovation, has recently focused on the effects of new firms – for-profit online educational institutions – on existing educational providers – the traditional college and university. My analysis suggests the point of disruption will not come from such competitors necessarily. Rather, it will come from organizations able to develop and deliver new forms of education based on innovative educational materials. This could be traditional

Dramatic changes will be needed for developing the creator-user role for faculty in liberal arts colleges. Perhaps the easiest part is creating these materials will require new kinds of tools, specifically new forms of software to ease the development of the complex environments for high quality digital education. Some of these capabilities already exist and are discussed below. But it will also require new kinds of faculty, those who combine sophisticated content knowledge with sophisticated technological understanding – the Pixar combination. Such persons do exist today but they are still rare and the structure of organizations is such that their skills are mostly wasted. Faculty will need to be paired with advanced tech support personnel, able to translate the content and pedagogy into new kinds of software systems. The creation of virtual 3D environments, for purposes of simulation or immersion experiences, will require sophisticated skills and considerable specialization of effort.

Cultural changes are needed. Currently, efforts to develop new forms of digital education are invariably subjected to intense criticism from faculty, and this criticism can only be overcome with a stupendous success. That is, many – perhaps most - existing faculty intensely resist using new digital materials (consider how many use e-books, hardly a significant innovation), waiting until these are perfected before considering adoption. Instead, we faculty should think in Pixar terms: trial and failure is not a negative but a positive indication of progress and should serve as a basis for improving the next effort. But, can the evaluation committees of new faculty – composed of faculty and administrators – understand this process and the implications for innovation?

The development of new digital media, in conjunction with rising levels of competition in educational markets, will hasten the creation of new organizational forms. There are several possible directions. The successful version(s) will need to build on the Pixar model and adapt that to the needs of creating, validating, distributing and using digital educational materials. The organizational elements will perhaps be the largest barrier to success because few if any existing organizations have the internal capacities to succeed nor the ability to assemble these capabilities into an effective business model. Is the digital educational world going to be created by an alliance of Inkling, Apple, Facebook, the for-profit university, Knewton22, a video game developer like NHN23 and the animation studios of Moonbot24? Will the most innovative and technologically savvy liberal arts faculty, frustrated by the conservatism of their institutions, exit and link into distributed networks to create the content “apps” for this world? And will online alliances of these faculty begin providing the education as well?

colleges and universities, radically transformed to adjust to this new environment. Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring, The Innovative University, Jossey-Bass, 2011.22 http://www.knewton.com/ 23 http://www.nhnusainc.com/usa/index.nhn 24 http://www.moonbotstudios.com/about.html

Why not just rely on the existing partnership between individual faculty and book publishers? Perhaps the best reason is current publishers are like music companies before iTunes, relying on old technology and deeply concerned about taking any step that can cannibalize existing products. Few will be able to make the break with the past and change enough to become effective players in a digital world. Just as Apple was needed to develop digital music and Amazon was needed to create an effective e-book business model, this will require organizations/firms with a clear position in the future of the digital world.

What about universities and colleges, specifically liberal arts colleges? Can liberal arts college faculty play a central role in creating the educational materials for a digital world? The answer is they should because liberal arts colleges define the best in education, and maybe they will. At the same time, our first instinct might be to see college faculty as a lot like music company executives, flailing around trying to figure out how to deal with pirated music before the creation of the iTunes store. But this would be unfair to the music executives: at least they understood they had a big problem.

Most faculty have no idea the threat posed by the digital world; they are more like the scribes in 1460 who were sure hand-copied books would always be superior to the book printed on a machine. As one observer has put it, faculty and universities may have already “been pushed to the margins to watch as their world is reconstructed elsewhere.”25 Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the mindset of most faculty, who have neither the time nor the inclination to analyze the situation before them. This leaves them in the position of these same monks in 1500, who cannot imagine how this same printing press soon will completely overturn their world. Some few faculty with the technical background have made important strides, but often in spite of their organization not because of it. Even those who may want to be involved in using technology to create educational materials are forced to choose between teaching, research and technology. Only rarely do these areas coincide in incentives and evaluation. In short, it is unclear whether we liberal arts faculty will react like the scribes of the 15th century facing the new printing press or more like five year olds in the 21st century who pick up iPads and instantly know how to use them.

What about administrative leadership at liberal arts colleges? The number with technical skills and interests is very small and few will stake their political position on the role of technology. At the same time, only strong and very innovative administrative leadership, often a very scarce resource, in alliance with faculty leaders with a clear vision (equally scarce), can leverage the values and skills of a liberal arts environment to this task. Almost surely, making the leap from here to there will require many leaders like Steve Jobs. Perhaps unpleasant, these will be people unwilling to accept the millions of excuses about why “X” cannot be done, for there will be many, many obstacles.25 Richard DiMillo, “Let’s Party Like its 1995,” The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, February 22, 2012, http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2656

This pessimism is countered by the great natural role for liberal arts colleges. Because the core purpose of the newest versions of digital educational materials is the development of highly creative, complex and exceptional quality forms of critical thinking in students, the natural locus for creating these materials should be the liberal arts college. It is liberal arts colleges that have devoted great energy and resources to develop engaged teaching based on multiple perspectives that promotes critical thinking. But whether the faculty and administration of these institutions will figure out how to leverage these resources into the digital age is quite uncertain. For this to happen, liberal arts colleges will need to disrupt themselves, and that is very unusual. IBM did it, but only after facing near death.26 Xerox would not do it, and gave away the digital store they had created.27 Kodak invented the digital camera and then was killed by it.28

III. Examples in the Present?

The key to creating great educational materials for digital natives29 will be to redefine them in terms of all of the engaging value that digitization can offer and link that with developing complex analytical and intellectual sensibilities in students. These new media must be designed and delivered in such a way that individualized configurations of content can be provided on demand or even through adaptive responses.30 Interactive text, hypertext, semantic web, pictures, video, music, simulations and immersive environments, all integrated and mutually supportive and deliverable on demand to a variety of devices, can be designed to be as compelling as a great movie, video game, or book and used to make learning and knowledge the same. These materials should encourage and enhance face-to-face interaction between teacher and student, not in any sense replace it. But the materials can expand dramatically the arc of interaction between student and professor – in virtual as well as face-to-face settings - by changing the nature of classroom discussion and experience. Most important, such materials can be used to accomplish the educational goals much of the existing materials and pedagogy fail to do: enhance the ability to absorb and process information, analyze, compute, evaluate, innovate and decide.31 One thing we should have learned from the birth of 26 Louis Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change, New York: Haper, 2003.27 Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, New York: Harper, 2000.28 Knowledge@Wharton, “What is Wrong With This Picture: Kodak’s 30-year Slide Into Bankruptcy,” 2/15/12, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn/index.cfm?fa=article&articleid=2541&languageid=1 29 An interesting hypothesis about technology relates the capacity for change and adjustment to the pace of generational change. Only after a generation emerges for whom the technology is completely natural can real changes associated with this technology begin. Everyone in advanced and many poor nations seventeen years old and younger in 2012 was “born on the web,” thereby opening the door to significant future changes in the near future.30 One existing edutech startup devoted to this is Knewton, http://www.knewton.com/ 31 Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, University of Chicago Press, 2011 documents the weaknesses in current educational outcomes. The

the PC era is not to criticize experiments, for we can never know which ones will change through a creative mashup and provide a platform for radical innovation.

Though compelling and complex interactive educational materials are rare, some early versions of parts of these kinds of materials can be found, often in the humanities. Examples include both content and content creation systems:

The first set of examples includes various kinds of software environments for the creation of digital media.

Scalar - http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/?page_id=6 Scalar is a software environment for integrating text and multiple sources of video and images.

Processing - http://processing.org/ Processing is a software environment for creating images, animations and interactions.

Ani - http://www.looksgood.de/log/2010/06/ani/ Provides an animation library for Processing.

GLGraphics - http://glgraphics.sourceforge.net/ Also supports animation for Processing.

Traer.Physics 3.0 - http://murderandcreate.com/physics/ Another software support for animation in Processing.

Unfolding - http://unfoldingmaps.org/ Software environment for creating interactive maps and data visualization.

Tile Mill - http://mapbox.com/tilemill/ Software for creating GIS-based maps

Gelph – http://gephi.org/ Gelph is an interactive platform for the visualization and analysis of data.

Twine - http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/ Software for creating interactive stories.

tradition of the lecture is also under question, again. Daniel de Vise, “Colleges Looking Beyond the Lecture,” Washington Post, February 15, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colleges-looking-beyond-the-lecture/2012/02/03/gIQA7iUaGR_story.html?hpid=z4 Many of the early efforts to develop simulations and immersive environments display the weaknesses coming from the absence of a clear connection between academic content and the technology. Many are “cool” but lack any clear academic purpose.

Celtx - https://www.celtx.com/ Celtx is a software environment for managing, storing and developing digital media.

JUNG - http://jung.sourceforge.net/ JUNG is a software environment for the modeling, analysis and visualization of data.

Vue - http://vue.tufts.edu/ Vue provides software that provides a “visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.”

Popcorn - http://popcornjs.org/ Software for linking web and video.

Sophie - http://www.sophieproject.org/ Sophie is software for reading and writing interactive books and other forms of text and multimedia.

Google Sketchup - http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/yourworldin3d/ Sketchup is a 3D modeling tool.

The following are examples of digital content that provide important features of new digital education.

Ubuweb - http://ubuweb.com/ Archive of films and audio works

USC School of Cinematic Arts (Walden, A Game) http://cinema.usc.edu/interactive/research/walden.cfm A virtual simulation of the Walden experiment by Thoreau.

Hypercities http://hypercities.com/about/ An example of geospatial humanities, Hypercities permits a deep and detailed examination of cities through time with layered GIS maps.

OmnesViae http://omnesviae.org/ Interactive map with embedded information about travel in the 4th century Roman World

There are intellectual resources on many liberal arts campuses that can become leaders propelling these institutions into the digital world. Whether they are there by accident or by design and strategy makes all the difference. Almost certainly, the most advanced digital educational materials are located in the natural

sciences.32 One impressive example is Mastering Biology, which provides an integrated system for teaching collegiate biology.33 This system is based online and offers a wide variety of visual aids for conceptualizing complex processes, a system of engaging interactive activities to improve understanding, capturing the outcomes of these activities by student, online exams and direct feedback by student and by class to the professor. All this creates a rich learning environment outside of class that provides much information to the professor about the state of student learning before class. Use of Mastering Biology permits much more specialized classroom time, focusing not only on particular problems for students but also encouraging class time activities that investigate more advanced and higher order skills and analysis.

There are also examples of organizational innovation related to liberal arts colleges and technology. NITLE is an organizational innovation involving a coalition of liberal arts colleges designed to promote the development of technology for education. Unfortunately, the depth of its effects at any given institution varies widely. At Rollins, NITLE has a very low profile among faculty and administrators and this may or may not be true elsewhere. Because NITLE is dependent on the administrative leadership at member institutions, it may have difficulty engaging in the kind of entrepreneurial and disruptive innovation needed.

Mostly in spite of or outside of existing organizational structures, there are faculty with advanced skills in computer simulation of social systems and with the time, interests and incentives to work closely with faculty in specialized social science fields. Two examples are:

One is an organizational model that is very interesting: the GIS-3D animation program at Washington College run by Stewart Bruce. Here Bruce has a reconfigured teaching load, employs and teaches many students, operates in an environment much of which is outside the university and the sources of funding require a much more entrepreneurial attitude. The result is a student-based entrepreneurial environment engaged in creating and using advanced digital materials supported by funded from grants and contracts.34 This may be the best current example of a Pixar-like organizational environment in a liberal arts college. Its nature suggests some of the radical and disruptive innovations needed to migrate to the new world.

A second example is Dr. Forrest Stonedahl at Centre College who is deeply involved in using computer simulations to analyze and understand questions that range across social, environmental and natural sciences.35 He is able to

32 Many thanks to Dr. Eileen Gregory, Professor of Biology at Rollins and Dr. Susan Welch, Assistant Professor of Biology at Rollins, for their help in my understanding of digital education in biology.33 http://www.masteringbio.com/site/product/for-instructors.html 34 Personal communication to the author from Stewart Bruce, 1/9/12. For an example of the output of this, see http://youtu.be/3XSLN7hGURQ35 http://forrest.stonedahl.com/index.html ; http://forrest.stonedahl.com/projects.html

develop multi-agent simulations as part of projects using agent-based modeling of social (and other) systems. These are important not only for students to use and manipulate as a part of understanding various social processes, but can also be used as devices students can even build themselves to understand processes and test their own hypotheses.

Stonedahl’s work in agent-based modeling of complex adaptive systems is a very different kind of computational social and natural science: creating and learning through experimental, interactive, hypothesis testing virtual environments. These simulation environments can be entirely built entirely in silico or as part of a human-based simulation built in virtual environments. One important premise is: to understand a social system you need to model it in a simulation environment and then examine its processes through experimentation. This generates powerful forms of interactive and experiential learning.36

There are other interesting examples of creative ideas for digital educational media. An example of creatively developing learning environments from computer-aided and robotic environments is Constructionism. This approach works to design new forms of person-to-person and person-to-computer interaction and engagement as a basis for promoting learning.37 An example of entrepreneurial effort to move beyond the constraints of a structured university environment to a completely online and free educational experience is by Sebastian Thrun, a computer science professor at Stanford and Google fellow. He has resigned from a tenured position at Stanford to set up an online university – Udacity - of sorts to offer free courses to all takers.38 This is an example of potentially disruptive innovation coming from simply creating online lectures, the value of which is students can work through them at their own pace.39

Scientists at the University of Washington have called on the intuitive guesswork of anyone willing to contribute to develop new ways to fold proteins related to a model enzyme so as to improve the functioning of the enzyme. The online competitive game Foldit was designed to use players’ guesses about

36 The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation offers examples of such work: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html ; Netlogo is an environment for the development and visualization of computer simulations and is a creation of the Center for Connected Learning at Northwestern: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ 37 http://constructionism2012.etl.ppp.uoa.gr/ 38 Blake J. Graham, “Robotics Mastermind Takes Education Online,” http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=5567334726408077325&ids=dj8PdPsMe30Qdz8Td3cPdPoRdiMSd3cQcjwMd3kUcP4UdPcTdzkRb38QdzgVcj4Pc3cVc30UcjsSdjkIc3oVcz8Pc3sTcj4Sc3cOdPoRdiMUdPkSdPcQd3oOdjgOdPwRdzkR&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-ttl-4&ut=33TqmshA2uCl41 39 For another example, see Kevin Carey, “College for $99 a Month,” Washington Monthly, September/October 2009http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_month.php?page=all ; another example of this approach is Udemy http://www.udemy.com/

variations in ways to fold proteins and create new proteins.40 Collaborative learning across space is found in the course “Looking for Whitman.”41

An effort at organizational innovation linked to innovation in content creation is the Open Learning Initiative, based at Carnegie Mellon University. Linked to funding by several foundations, including the Gates Foundation, OLI focuses on introductory courses offered in large sections and works to improve completion rates. The software systems designed for courses are based on learning theory and work to build skills and provide effective feedback to students and to professors.42

IV. Studying U.S.-China Relations in a Digital World

If existing digital resources for studying U.S.-China relations are inadequate, what would really good digital media look like and do? 43 Some answers can be found through digital mashups of the best existing resources with a dash of creativity and specialization thrown in for this particular topic.44 The examples described below are well within reach but lack an organizational environment for their creation. The standard for these new digital learning media is to incorporate high levels of engagement and interactivity, provide factual and analytical information of significant value, expand the ability to locate, evaluate and apply information in realistic scenarios, and improve the ability to develop effective alternatives together with analysis of potential outcomes in policy environments. In addition, these media should support various forms of social media for engaging in team-playing and sharing ideas and must provide a variety of “testing” settings linked to adaptive responses to support learning. Finally, the new systems must incorporate learning analytics by collecting data and providing analytics from individual students and from data aggregation across various professor-defined groups of students.

There are two important forms of digital media that could dramatically advance the learning environment for studying U.S.-China relations.45 The best

40 Jessica Marshall, “Victory for Crowdsourced Biomolecule Design,” Nature, January 22, 2012, http://www.nature.com/news/victory-for-crowdsourced-biomolecule-design-1.9872 ; Scientific American, “Foldit Online Protein Puzzle,” http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=foldit-protein-exploration-puzzle 41 http://lookingforwhitman.org/ 42 Marc Parry, “Candace Thille Is Redesigning Courses,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2012, A-10. http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/ 43 I teach such a course, both in the U.S. and in China, but without the benefits of compelling digital educational media. http://myweb.rollins.edu/tlairson/china/uschinarel.html 44 I am unaware of the existence of any of these digital media in the forms described.45 And these media would surely contain considerable modularity that would permit reuse in other courses. The creation of modular elements in digital technology will require theoretical analysis of the ways different knowledge components are related – the ways ideas are complementary and

model for compelling digital educational media is the video game with an AI-based interactive 3D virtual environment and incorporating SIRI-like input and response capabilities that asks and answers questions. This should be combined with a computer simulation or important features of U.S.-China relations linked to interactive maps with rich and extensive embedded data. At present, various elements of such media can be seen in separate systems. The newest version of Sim City is a great example of an interactive game with considerable information, difficult problems in balancing competing problems and complexities in applying information to develop choices and preferable outcomes. 46

The basic learning environment for studying U.S.-China relations is a GIS-based but enhanced series of maps, incorporating visual, audio, quantitative and textual information and mashed-upped with Google Earth, Hypercities and multi-touch capabilities.47 These GIS-based and dynamically layered maps with embedded complex links to text and multimedia information provide the basis for a variety of game-like activities for learning through exploring alternative scenarios in the U.S.-China relationship. This new kind of map will serve as a reference point for developing simulation environments of various forms of economic, political and military interaction that challenge students to understand relationships and scenarios.

Here are several examples of high quality information display and the use of animation and touch-based interactivity:

Example of data effectively embedded in an interactive chart:https://www.tradingview.com/

Example of effective animation supporting conceptualization:http://hint.fm/ http://hint.fm/wind/

Example of effective narration combined with animated data:http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-chart-20

An example of intense interaction with maps and networks compatible with the “touch” experience of an iPad is http://max-planck-research-networks.net/ .

fungible.46 Nathanael Massey, “SimCity 2013 Players will Face Tough Choices on Energy and the Environment,” Scientific American, March 12, 2012, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=simcity-2013-players-face-tough-energy-environment-choices&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20120313 47 Google Earth http://www.google.com/earth/index.html ; Hypercities http://hypercities.com/ ; Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS-SLGAWxHY

http://max-planck-research-networks.net/

Here is a good map, but we need to imagine how much more can be done to turn this into a dynamically interactive source of information:

Source: The Economist, http://www.economist.com/node/17601499

What can be done to make this a really good map? First, this map should be GIS-based with a series of unfolding and dynamic and semi-transparent layers focus on discreet issues related to the South China Sea:

various boundaries and claims for all nations in the area pictures of the various atolls and islands estimates of oil recovery and locations of oil fields potential points of military engagement actual points of military engagement between China and Vietnam locations of U.S. military bases with data on troops and capabilities Chinese military forces and bases, especially in Fujian province across

the Taiwan Strait trade and money flows between the US and China data on the structure of GPNs for US firms such as Apple, including an

interactive layered map with the locations, trade values and % of value chains for a Macbook Air, and iPad and iPhone and

similar maps for manufacturing a Buick and a Volkswagen in Shanghai;

systems of global production, animated so the actual movement of components can be traced through the value chain.

This visually compelling way of displaying information draws the viewer into the material leading them in true interactive fashion to explore, providing the user

paths for investigation and the resources to engage in this exploration. An example, though limited by its circumstances, is Burning Man by Flint Hahn.48

Source: http://xmasons.com/prints/burning-man-infographic/

Each of these dimensions is a doorway to a cascading collection of more information, much like working down through a fractal but with links and connections to topics and issues related to the learning simulations.

The maps would serve as information repositories for the simulations of U.S.-China relations. The model for interactive learning is the video game, which in spite of its often-deserved negative image, has very strong learning capabilities.49 Video game-like experiential activities with varying kinds of tests built in to enhance learning can be designed around important issues in U.S.-China relations.50

An example might include a short simulation in which the U.S. engages in efforts to coerce China to revalue its currency by naming China a currency

48 http://xmasons.com/prints/burning-man-infographic/ 49 Robert Lee Hotz, “When Gaming is Good for You,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263273943183932.html 50 The learning efficacy of “tests” is well known, but the relentless time schedule of a semester class at a fixed time prevents repeated testing. The online world, especially one that alters this fixed pace, easily encompasses this role for testing and can do so in ways that are varied and even interesting. Dan Berrett, “Harvard Conference Seeks to Jolt University Teaching,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Seeks-to-Jolt/130683/

manipulator and couples that with higher tariffs on some selected products. Students could take on either the U.S. or China role and play against the computer or against each other with the computer as moderator of actions and consequences. To complete the simulation, students would need to examine two sets of information: 1) Short case studies of trade wars in other contexts; and 2) a description of the resources possessed by China and the U.S. that could be used in this conflict. The computer game would be written so as to include an array of AI-based responses to actions taken by either side. Following some prescribed sequence of action taken by a student, the game would prompt for an explanation of an action and reference either resources or case studies. Before proceeding, a student would need to explain his/her actions – a kind of test. The game would collect together the responses made by a student as a report and send this to the professor. Games like this easily accommodate multiple players, which could include features that require explanation of proposed actions before a decision is reached. A wide variety of skills and knowledge – decision-making, evaluating information, analysis of alternatives and outcomes - are engaged by such a relatively simple game and many of the issues of time and space are resolved with the online format.

Even more complex simulations could be built around managing a conflict relating to the South China Sea, in which the U.S. would need to deal with the diplomatic and strategic dimensions of a Chinese-Vietnamese military engagement over control of oilfields. Each of the online activities should be embedded in a social network that leads students to discuss what is happening with each other outside of class, a sort of blog, but one tied to the experiences involved in the course. Students could be engaged in making changes to the game(s) itself, which also involves a new level of learning. For example, a key element of the Netlogo environment for developing simulations is the readily available ability to experiment with the simulation by changing the parameters for the variables and rerunning the simulation. More complicated, but still relatively easy, is changing the structure of the simulation through altering the code itself. Such capabilities invite a level of interactivity, engagement and learning not typically available in non-digital learning environments.51

Wolf-Sheep-Grass Simulation in Netlogo

51 An example is creating a model to forecast the development of slums in Mumbai: http://meridian.aag.org/callforpapers/program/AbstractDetail.cfm?AbstractID=41891

V. A Pixar Model for Liberal Arts Colleges

What do liberal arts colleges need to do to leverage their capabilities as the best form of learning into the world of creating effective digital teaching materials?

1) An institution-wide commitment to change, especially in support of an entrepreneurial mindset. At the very least, what is required is an institution-wide commitment to create, accept, protect and nourish a part of the institution (the Pixar unit) with such an attitude.52

2) A deep understanding by college leaders of the strategic value of the Pixar unit for the success and even survival of the institution. Providing the new forms of education will create its own demand.

3) 3) New incentives to support faculty-technologist collaboration in creating digital materials: reconfiguring load, evaluations, the nature of teaching and tenure, compensation, support resources, conceptions of time and space.

4) 4) Design a business model for the Pixar unit based on developing new digital teaching media and providing new forms of education based on those media.

52 The value of a “skunkworks” for promoting innovation is considered in Aaron Shapiro, “Stop Blabbing About Innovation and Start Actually Doing It,” FastCompany, April 16, 2012, http://www.fastcompany.com/1833190/stop-blabbing-about-innovation-and-start-actually-doing-it

5) 5) Dramatic expansion of the technical skills and content skills of technical support personnel and a redirection of responsibilities toward creating digital media.

6) 6) Development of student technology resources for creating these materials – students as interns and courses devoted to content creation.53

7) 7) Acceptance of a trial and error process of change and an understanding of failure as a sign of progress.

8) 8) A willingness to link the institution into the value chain for the creation of digital educational materials, even if this means a deep partnership with companies like Apple

9) 9) Most important, liberal arts colleges need to understand their real competitive advantage may not lie in leafy campuses but in an approach to ideas, learning, thinking and education and leverage this into the digital age.

The biggest question of all is can liberal arts colleges make this leap that requires self-disruptive behavior? We can estimate the chances through judgments about the mindset of administrators, faculty and information technology departments. Most senior administrators are aware the liberal arts colleges are facing “challenging” times, but the primary focus is on the unsustainable levels of tuition and the problems of controlling costs and increasing retention. Very few think in terms of an online revolution and disruptive innovation and the threats and opportunities this presents. Very few institutions have created a new administrative unit with the resources and autonomy to operate in terms of a Pixar model.54

Some faculty “get it” and have made important strides in developing new ideas, but they typically operate in isolation from each other and with limited understanding and support from other faculty and even from administrators. The business school faculty are no more likely than in humanities (maybe less) to grasp the implications of the new environment. And IT departments, focused on managing the inventory of computers, the network and software support systems, have little time to imagine a changed role in the new digital content world. If asked about this, most administrators, faculty and IT managers would probably assert that liberal arts colleges are mostly immune from these challenges and have little to worry about.

53 In addition to the examples from Stewart Bruce and Washington College, an international business course at Rollins has students creating apps for mobile devices.54 Perhaps the best example of such a capability is the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech, http://c21u.gatech.edu/about-c21u . Here, experimental entrepreneurialism, partnerships with private firms, and strong technology support for faculty experiments replicate many of the features of the Pixar model.

VI. Strategic Consequences of New Digital Media

They could hardly be more wrong, for the point of disruptive innovation will come first and most powerfully from the creators of new digital media.

Why will good digital educational materials change the way education takes place?

Online education has made significant strides in the past decade, but it remains a niche mode especially in liberal arts colleges. Though the role of online education is probably at an inflection point moving toward exponential rates of change, there are still significant barriers to mainstreaming this mode of education.55 This is largely because the materials for online education are not especially compelling in demonstrating a case for the educational value of online education that is as strong as the cost case for such a system.56 None of the primary groups engaged by online education - students, faculty or even administrators – really believe the use of online courses, even in a blended learning setting, is as good and certainly not better than a traditional classroom setting. What is missing from this system is the compelling digital materials that are so good they make this case. Just as the spreadsheet program was sufficient to justify spending the money for a computer 30 years ago – the definition of the “killer app” – these kinds of materials are the missing link in creating successful online education.

Once these materials are available, the educational process will begin to change and will co-evolve with the materials. New educational possibilities, primarily the ability to live up to our own expectations, will flow from the relationship of new technologies and new practices. Four major structural changes in the “course” are likely: separating the “course” from the semester; expanding and enhancing the classroom in time and space; individualizing both the pace of learning and the level of learning; and seamlessly embedding processes of student and course assessment into the educational materials.57

The relationship between time in and out of the classroom will change, so that working with and mastering digital educational materials will provide a prerequisite for attending class. This will elevate dramatically the quality of classroom time. By sorting students into different levels of mastery of digital

55 There are many reasons put forward for taking courses online, from cost to competition. But the only good reason is that going online provides a value added that cannot come in any other way.56 Studies of the use of digital materials in class suggest a significant disconnect to learning goals. “It found that most professors relied on text-based assignments and materials. In the instances when professors did decide to use interactive tools like online video, many of those technologies were not connected to learning objectives, the study found.” Nick DeSantis, “Study Suggests Many Professors Use Interactive Tools Ineffectively in Online Courses,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2012 http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/study-suggests-many-professors-use-interactive-tools-ineffectively-in-online-courses/35677?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en 57 Lairson, “Rethinking the ‘Course’ in an Online World.” Some of these structural changes have begun to happen.

materials, professors can work on different levels in different classes. Of course, this requires much more individualized and specialized classes, tailored to the capabilities students bring to the class, and data supplied from the online learning activities. Learning time away from class will be enhanced by social media, tied to virtual learning spaces and integrated into digital materials. Students will play an active role in creating and individualizing virtual learning spaces.

Not only will what we call the “course” morph into unrecognizable forms, the nature of the “degree” will also be transformed. Virtually all universities and liberal arts colleges retain a “degree” that is a composite of courses that are the result of politically negotiated relationships among faculty. The evidence linking these degrees to desired educational outcomes is minimal. The new world of complex and sophisticated digital materials will change this in dramatic ways. Most important, new forms of digital materials will make much easier and clearer the connection between learning and specific educational competencies and capabilities, including the most sophisticated of those related to critical thinking. Digital materials will allow for the continuing individualized instruction needed to teach, examine and certify various kinds of capabilities. This will have massive effects on the structure of degrees, turning them into composites of “courses” that lead to definable and demonstrable abilities. For liberal arts to remain viable in this new world, it too will need to have definable and demonstrable outcomes, which are possible but require a completely new mindset among faculty – a Pixar mindset. And this process will also accelerate the movement toward certification of specific capabilities rather than working toward a composite degree.58

Why will the organization that creates educational materials have a competitive advantage in providing the education itself?

In short, why is the point of disruption at the level of digital educational materials and not at the level of the university itself, as Clayton Christensen contends? The primary reason is new online forms will have decisive cost advantages over traditional education and once the educational experience in online is as good or even better than traditional classrooms (based on student reports and outcome measures) disruption will proceed apace. But achieving this level of quality will require much better digital materials and the “course” that emerges will be as much changed as the materials themselves. Creating and using the materials together will provide a decisive competitive advantage over those who specialize in creating or using.59

We are in the midst of a competition over the e-book, with various firms attempting to leverage existing and new resources and capabilities to capture or

58 Tamar Levin, “Beyond the College Degree: Online Educational Badges,” New York Times, March 4, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-educational-badges.html?ref=education 59 One interesting but flawed precursor to the world of linked digital materials and digital education is O’Reilly Media, which provides digital publishing and digital education. http://oreilly.com/

even dominate this market. Amazon will leverage its Kindle device and a wide array of content and Apple will do the same, with the iPhone and iPad and its iBooks system. Both Amazon and Apple have created a integrated system linking device and content that attempts to design in a distributed system of content authoring. Apple has done this with the iBooks authoring app and Amazon with its publishing unit. Other competitors with one piece of the value chain will need to link closely to one or both of these systems. For example, NBC has entered the market for e-books using the leverage provided by pictures and video, but confronts the platform/device problem and its lack of access to content authoring. Publishers enter the market with the most established system of distributed content authoring and selling e-books for about the same price as physical books, hoping to leverage legacy assets but confronting problems of cannibalizing existing resources and the negative consequences of disruptive innovation forces. Other potential players, such as Facebook and Twitter, bring important assets to the value chain and will have the least difficulty integrating into a digital system. In the end, the winners in this process will be those who are able to develop the most compelling content and deliver it in the most flexible manner. In this competitive environment, liberal arts colleges and most liberal arts faculty largely do not realize they are potentially key players, with much to gain from being in the process and even more to lose from being left out.

Liberal arts colleges have an important opportunity to leverage the best content and the best teaching but be unable to act on this advantage, with potentially serious consequences. This is because of the tightly coupled relationship between new digital educational materials and the development of online education. First, these materials will make the case for a substantial online component for education by creating activities that substantially enhance the capacity to promote the goals of a liberal education: engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective, values-clarifying, decision-making, information-evaluation learning. Locating these materials in an online space will propel changes in education relating to time, space and process that break with the 12th century model of education tied to agricultural seasons and physical environments.

Second, the organization that creates educational materials will have a competitive advantage in taking the lead in providing the education itself. The initial point of disruptive innovation in the coming years is not the college or university but at the level of creating digital educational materials themselves. Other disruptions will flow from control over the creation and application of these materials. Third, the greatest uncertainty is the source of these materials. Whether faculty and others from liberal arts colleges will play a key role in the development and even use of these materials is unclear. Only with substantial changes in attitude and organization within liberal arts colleges, and based on the Pixar model, can this happen. Much hinges on the actions of faculty and administrators.

We have had our “Bach” of the digital world in Steve Jobs; now we need a Hayden, a Corelli, a Mozart and a Beethoven and hopefully some will be in liberal arts colleges.

VII. Conclusions

There are many potential scenarios for future changes in higher education, but very few believe in the option of remaining the same. Many forecasts see some form of radical change, with disruptive innovation coming from online courses. There are great risks in any pathway of change.60 Perhaps the direction of least resistance is to aim for the lowest common denominator of the educational market. This involves designing courses that substitute for the 500-student class common across the nation. Unfortunately, and in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, few advocates of this idea seem especially concerned about the low quality of the existing lecture system in most universities (mass “education”) and readily envision a simple porting of this system to the online world.61 At the same time, the demand for low quality and low cost education should not be underestimated and many existing and new institutions will be happy to provide it. A more expensive but much higher quality alternative is to create digital educational materials for the online world based on the educational principles of the liberal arts college but also tailored to delivering pragmatic and demonstrable learning outcomes. In a knowledge-intensive world, the ability to provide such an education for a reasonable cost will likely generate considerable demand as well.

This paper outlines a plausible and perhaps likely direction for change: over the next decade new organizational forms will emerge able to create exceptional quality digital educational materials and use those to provide a reasonable cost but compelling pragmatic education based on liberal arts principles. This system will use some form of blended delivery and will provide a variety of options in time and space for students, and will set the standard for education on a global scale.

But what happens if the faculty and administration of liberal arts colleges don’t make the transition to a digital world by becoming central players in the creation and use of digital educational media? If creation and use of these new capabilities are bound together, then one option – becoming users and not creators – is less viable. In a world where competitors are all alike except for branding, faculty and institutions can pick and choose these roles with little consequence. Today, virtually all content for university–level instruction comes from faculty

60 http://www.snhu.edu/online.aspx ; Stuart M. Butler, “The Coming Higher-Ed Revolution,” National Affairs, 10 (Winter 2012) www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-coming-higher-ed-revolution ; Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Liberal Arts at the Brink, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.61 This is probably because the “low hanging fruit” are in the economies of scale of such an approach. Often cited as a innovator, Khan Academy primarily follows this model. http://www.khanacademy.org/ . There are many other examples of this approach. Also see Jeffrey Young, “Sal Khan is Killing the Lecture,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2012, A11.

creators as established content experts. If and when this ends, or becomes restricted to a tiny few faculty and institutions, liberal arts colleges may well be cut out of any role in creating the radically different media needed for teaching and may become reduced to the status of adjunct instruction. This outcome may be observed in limited form at Southern New Hampshire University, where creators of digital course content materials do not typically teach the courses. Instead, adjuncts do the teaching, suggesting an interesting separation of tasks and differentiation of status.62

Notwithstanding the marketing rhetoric, liberal arts colleges are not hotbeds of flexibility and innovation. The rigidities and conservatism of organization and mindset, also evident elsewhere, are perhaps even more deeply embedded in institutions long accustomed to facing limited competition and employing people with a lifetime contract. If IT departments in a distinguished liberal arts college cannot see the value of providing faculty with an iPad to engage in experimentation in creating digital media, how can we have any hope to see the dynamic entrepreneurialism and innovation needed to traverse this new world? The real truth is virtually no liberal arts colleges have a viable institutional strategy for maneuvering in the new digital world.

Sadly, the most likely successful organizational outcomes of the new digital educational world are outside of existing liberal arts colleges. This presages a future for liberal arts colleges much like that followed by Kodak and many newspapers. Surely some of the faculty of these institutions will participate in this process through self-organized arrangements that do not depend on their college affiliation – faculty start-ups are common in other technology-intensive settings63 - and the best will migrate into the new digital education value chains. The great value they bring with them are existing teaching skills and liberal arts values, but they will almost surely need new organizational forms within which they create the new digital pedagogy. Many students will also shift into an environment where compelling content, flexibility, innovation, and demonstrable learning outcomes can be found. In an environment of increasing competition and shrinking budgets for traditional institutions, any existing flexibility and innovation will evaporate, leading to a nearly inevitable death spiral for many (most?) institutions. There is much room for a deep pessimism about the fate of the liberal arts college, except perhaps as the victim of a hostile takeover by educational entrepreneurs and financiers. The history of this coming period may well have a large dose of irony, as the values of the liberal arts college live on in new institutions we cannot now foresee.

62 http://www.snhu.edu/ 63 And venture capital has recently surged into Edutech start-ups, specifically in higher education, a field some see as ripe for disruptive (and destructive) innovation. Nick DeSantis, “A Boom Time for Education Start-ups,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2012, A1, A15-16. Another example is John Markoff, “Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Lures 5 Top Universities,” New York Times, April 18, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/technology/coursera-plans-to-announce-university-partners-for-online-classes.html?_r=1&hpw

Postscript

What would a liberal arts college do if it wanted to prove me wrong? Here are four brief ideas.

First, adopt the Deng Xiaoping approach to creating change. This involves a form of distributed, incremental experimentation: “crossing the river by feeling for stones.”

Second, adopt the Picasso approach to ideas: “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.”Third, adopt the recombinant approach to innovation: Mash-ups and more mash-ups.

Fourth, create a semi-autonomous unit based on these three principles.