Transcript Slides - TERENA Networking Conference 2008

The Tower and the Cloud:
Tomorrow’s Network for
Tomorrow’s University
Richard N. Katz
Vice President
EDUCAUSE
TNC 2008 Brugges, Belgium
Our Concern, Since 1969
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Our Magnificent Success:
Importance of the Network
5
Mean Change in Importance
4.32
4.52
4.39
3.96 3.93
4
3.96
3.64
3.34
3.57
3.78
3.35
3.50
3
2
1
Research in Science
and Engineering
Research in Other
Disciplines
United States (N=112)
Creative Activity
Europe (N=27)
Teaching and
Learning
Australia/New Zealand (N=28)
Scale: 1=no importance, 2=minor importance,
3=moderate importance, 4=high importance, 5=very high importance
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Our Concern, Starting Now?
Society
The Economy
Human Psychology
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Accelerating Change
“We live in a moment of
history where change
is so speeded up that
we begin to see the
present only when it is
already disappearing.”
R.D. Laing
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Question
Are we building tomorrow’s
technology for yesterday’s
world? (or yesterday’s
university?)
TNC 2008 Brugges, Belgium
The World, c. 2008
• Flat
• Accelerating Change
– Radically Changing
Demographics
– Geopolitics
– Rise of Personal Power
– Knowledge-driven Era
– Information Wars
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Higher Education, c. 2008
• Shift from public good to
private investment
• Rising costs
• Increasing pressures on
revenues
• Increasing pressures to
account for student
success and institutional
performance
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Higher Education, c. 2008
• Democratization of access to
university and its resources
• Increasing competition for
– talent (staff and students)
– funds
– influence
• Balkanization
– private v. public
– elite v. mass education
– research v. all others
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Higher Education, c. 2008
• Increasing importance of
higher education
– Wealth of nations
– Mobility of citizens
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The Cloud, c. 2008
• Continued improvement
in price-performance
• 1,000,000,000 on the
network
• Widespread access to
broadband networks
• Much content is digital
and is reasonably
accessible*
* But a war is brewing over
IP rights
* Not if you are a humanities
scholar!
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The Cloud, c. 2008
• The network really is the
computer
• Emergence of the Net
Gen collegiate
– Some continue to be shut
out
• Web 2.0 is a social
phenomenon
• Digital environments
begin to simulate real
ones
• A real revolution in
scientific research
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Questions
How is the (Internet) cloud
growing to envelop the
University?
How is the University using the
cloud to extend its presence?
How does ‘cloudiness’ alter the
form of our social institutions?
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Shifting Balance of Power
– politics of (information)
scarcity v. politics of
abundance
– from individual to
collective?
– from teacher to learner?
– from expert to amateur?
– from institution to ???
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Trends
Rising Consumerism
• Flattening enrollments
mean rising choice for
some
• ‘Net Gen’ Students/
‘Helicopter’ parents
• Club ‘Mid’
• Jobs, jobs, jobs
• The real and the
virtual
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Trends
The Rise of ‘Truthiness’
• Moral anchor is missing
• Partially solvable in
middleware
• Partially solvable in tools
• Partially solvable in the
evolution and
transmission of scholarly
values and skills in the
digital context
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Trends
Emergence of the Collective
• Wikipedia
• Seti@home
• TASS
– Mapping the night sky
• Citizen journalism
• Social tagging
• ‘American Idolization’ of
Everything
• Wikiversity
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Trends
And Technology Keeps Rollin’
“Exponential growth
looks like nothing is
happening, until it
explodes.”
Ray Kurzweil
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Trends
The context of IT ≠
the context of higher education
• we do not serve all who
can learn
• we have not made
higher education more
efficient
• we have not yet
transformed learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
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Dilemmas
Really Neat IT ≠
Student Engagement and Success
• High rates of attrition
• Evidence of declining
engagement
• High needs for
remediation (USA)
• Equivocal evidence about
the economic benefits of
postsecondary education
• The vanishing male
student
• The vanishing student
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Dilemmas
Everything Digital, Everyone Online,
≠ Privatizing Knowledge
• Consolidating media
conglomerates
• DMCA in USA
• Googlization of the
academic library
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Dilemmas
Really Neat IT ≠ Great Teaching
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Dilemmas
And Yet Great IT =
Great Research!
• In silico simulation has
become the 3rd leg of
scientific research
• Research productivity
has demonstrably
improved
• Research has been
truly globalized
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Possibilities
Question
What vision, metaphor, or vision will define
our boundaries and inspire our reach?
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Cloudy Future
School of Athens?
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
The Log College?
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
The Student Free University?
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
Murdoch University?
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
The Library without Walls?
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
The Co-Laboratory?
University of Melbourne-UC San Diego Optiportal
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Guiding Metaphor
Cloudy Future
Virtual U?
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Guiding Metaphor
Questions to Frame our Next Steps
What is the ‘idea’ of the university?
What is the institution really trying
to do?
What does the institution really need
to do well to manifest its intent?
What are the information
infrastructure, environment, and
services that will enable (or
drive) this?
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More Specifically
• Do we have a strategy and an infrastructure to manage
(discover, engage, attract, develop …) talent?
• How do we re-think scholarly collections to promote
scholarly literacy, engagement, communication, and
citizenship?
• What kind of influence does the university wish to exert on
world affairs? How will IT influence ‘presence’?
• How do we construct collaborative environments that extend
the university’s footprint?
• Can we create and maintain the web of robust networks (to
people, to data, to instruments, etc)? Can we share
services in ways that can truly lower the cost of education?
• Do our policies and incentives reinforce what our
infrastructure, services and resources enable?
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In Sum
IT has gotten better. So good in fact, it
allows us to change things. Profoundly.
IT allows others to change things as well,
making our task more urgent and more
complex. In the next decade, the modern
university is likely to be less a place, than an
idea instantiated in architecture – real and
virtual.
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In Sum
Our challenge is less technical and more one
of institutional purpose, adaptability, and will.
The needs of our stakeholders are changing.
Soon virtual environments to support learning
and discovery will rival and surpass ‘built’ ones,
in certain cases. The successful university of the
future will know its values, have clarity of purpose,
and an IT capacity to reflect and extend those
values and purposes globally.
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A Concluding Question
(that is prologue)
“Information technology is embedded in, and used by, institutions that
have a history…
IT will cut its own channels, leading to the creation of institutions that
differ from those of today; institutions where the weight of history
does not condition and constrain IT’s use.”
Martin Trow, in
Daedelus, Fall, 1997
“...technology is not something that happens to us.
It is something we create. We must not confuse a tool with a goal.
We must, therefore, be sure that technology serves
the fundamental purposes of higher education."
Stanley N. Katz, in
"In IT, Don't Mistake
a Tool for a Goal"
TNC 2008 Brugges, Belgium