I am reading several books at present on higher education. One of these is Jose’ Antonio Bowen’s Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning. It is a thought-provoking book about how the digital revolution is shaping the world of higher education

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Much has been made of the new possibilities the digital revolution makes possible in terms of online course work, free university-level education through vehicles like Coursera, and the sheer fact that everything taught in class can probably be found on one’s smartphone, perhaps with higher quality presentation value. Many are looking at the potential cost savings these technologies offer and wondering about the future of brick and mortar colleges and universities.

One of the points that Bowen focuses on, however, focuses around the “analog” nature of teaching. True teaching is not simply about the transfer of information, which may be done more effectively through vehicles like those mentioned above. Rather, it is about the relationship between teacher and student–a face to face interaction, not only in class but at a local coffee shop or in an office or lab. Granted, some of this may be done online and this could actually enhance teacher effectiveness.

Bowen’s point is that in this revolution, professors need to re-think their role and what they do in the classroom. He advocates for using all this technology–but outside the classroom by both curating the online content to direct students to the best content sources, through using podcasts, blogs, and tweets to personalize this to the class, and then using class time for critical interaction about this content and applicative exercises that require doing the outside of class work necessary for good preparation.

This makes good sense to me. Most professors cannot deliver lectures nearly as engaging as what may be found online (and Bowen allows that where one can do this, or this is the best way to present certain forms of material, professors should still do this). What they can do is guide the learning process and provide living models of thoughtful scholarship in their area of training. It seems that this work of re-thinking classroom teaching is essential. If resisted, I could easily see a greater move to digital university providers with the University of Phoenix and their ilk becoming the iTunes and Amazon of higher education.

If you are around the world of higher education, what do you think the landscape of higher education will look like in ten years? How do you think (or do you think) teaching needs to adapt to this “brave new world”?