Synopsis
Universities for years have been the bright spot in our educational system. Today, these institutions are under siege from multiple constituencies including students, parents, legislators, government officials and their own faculties. Education has historically been a way for students to improve their lives and fortunes. However, the rising costs of college are a barrier to access for many students, reducing their chances for upward mobility.Is technology the solution, or is it just another costly problem for universities? The purpose of this book is to explore how new technology has the potential to transform higher education. However, this same technology also has the potential to disrupt universities. Much depends on how administrators, faculty and students apply technologically enhanced learning.Technology and the Disruption of Higher Education presents details on MOOCs, blended, flipped and online classes and their role in transforming higher education based on the author's experiences teaching all of these types of courses. These technology-enabled approaches to teaching and learning offer tremendous opportunities to schools, but they also threaten the traditional university. The book identifies some of these threats and opportunities and offers suggested strategies to take advantage of the technology.Is this technology enough to save the university system? While new ways of teaching and learning are exciting, they are only part of the puzzle. Radical change beyond what happens in the classroom is needed if our higher education system is to continue to flourish and some of these ideas are discussed in the last chapter of the book. The book is a call to action for educators to realize that the technology is both transformational and disruptive, and that some universities are going to fail in the next 15 years.
About the Author
Henry C Lucas, Jr. is the Robert H Smith Professor of Information at the Robert H Smith School of Business, and the Chair of the Decision, Operations and Information Technologies Department, the University of Maryland. Professor Lucas' research interests include IT-enabled transformations, disruptive technologies, the impact of information technology on organizations, information technology in organization design and the value of information technology. Professor Lucas is currently studying the impact of technology on higher education and has taught a MOOC on Coursera, online and blended classes. He is the author of a dozen books and more than 90 articles in professional periodicals on the impact of technology, information technology in organization design, the return on investments in technology, implementation of information technology, decision-making for technology, and information technology and corporate strategy. He was the vice president of publications for the Association for Information Systems (AIS) from 1995 to 1998 and editor-in-chief of the AIS electronic journals, Communications of AIS and Journal of AIS, from 1998 to 2002. He received a BS from Yale University and a MS and PhD from the Sloan School of Management, MIT.
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