Viewpoint December 21, 2009, 3:46PM EST

Reining in College Costs

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Online Plus Face-to-Face Instruction

Although it will take some time to fully evaluate this model, one thing we are learning is that sophisticated online learning materials supplemented with direct faculty-student interaction can be a powerful combination. This was confirmed by a report recently released by the U.S. Education Dept. that presented the results of a meta-analysis conducted on more than 1,000 empirical studies of online learning. The analysis showed that instruction combining online and face-to-face elements (called hybrid or blended learning) was more effective than either purely face-to-face instruction or purely online instruction. In short, the report documented that high tech plus high touch works best.

We are also learning that to deliver a powerful brand of high-tech, high-touch education that lowers costs and enhances learning, institutions need to make a fundamental shift in their underlying educational paradigm.

It has been well-established in a host of settings that digital technology, all by itself, rarely boosts productivity. The same is true for higher education. Ultimately, it is not the technology but the new practices that the technology enables which will revolutionize learning. These new practices entail a shift in attention away from what is taught (the "teaching" paradigm) to what and how a student learns (the "learning" paradigm). What are the critical differences?

The academic world has been operating out of the teaching paradigm since the founding of the first universities in the Middle Ages. Here professors are "subject matter experts" responsible for selecting and presenting material to students; specifying what students should read; assigning papers and developing exams; and, finally, giving each student a grade. Students expect the teacher to give them information and to tell them how to think about it—in other words, to teach them. Exactly what students are expected to learn in the class is rarely communicated.

The "Learning" Paradigm

In the "learning" paradigm, the teacher is not the expert provider of knowledge, but rather a guide who first specifies what students are expected to learn and then lays out pathways they can follow to meet the learning goals. The teacher becomes a supporter, a collaborator, and a coach for students as they learn to evaluate and gather information, test ideas, and explore their application to different issues and problems. Students begin to learn how to develop and pose their own questions and to explore alternative ways of finding and framing answers. So instead of working only to master the subject matter of a course, students are developing the skills to learn on their own. They no longer wait to be taught—they come to realize that, if they are to succeed, they must take a good deal of responsibility for their own learning.

The learning paradigm changes the traditional roles and relationships that have defined higher education for so long. Since technology can provide students with access to more and better learning resources than they could ever get from a lecture, faculty can let go of the full weight of being the "subject matter expert." Freed from the burden of being the sole source of subject-specific information, they can function as learning guides, facilitators, and mentors, placing more emphasis on helping students master those critical intellectual skills and attributes that transcend academic disciplines. And once released from the responsibility to deliver all of the content, faculty can work effectively with more students, thus reducing the cost of the learning experience and increasing its quality.

Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, is not optimistic about how traditional higher education in the U.S. will adapt to the mounting pressures for change. He writes, "Higher education is unprepared for a global information economy. …This era will bring increasing competition from for-profit postsecondary educators and international universities. Meanwhile, some of these same competitors are already taking advantage of the gap between our students' extensive use of digital learning technologies and our institutions' continuing reliance on traditional methods of teaching and learning." Clayton Christensen goes a step further. He believes that increasingly sophisticated online learning models will ultimately transform higher education into an enterprise that is much more affordable, convenient, and effective and that many more people will have access to it than ever before. He also claims that these new models will ultimately topple many of the universities that today seem to be so unassailable.