The Education Scare: The Monster is Out There!

by Xenia Stanford, Editor-in-Chief, KnowMap and President, Stanford Solutions Inc.

We start with the questions:

Is traditional academia outdated?

Is distance education a viable alternative?

The following statement by Eric Hoffer has a powerful message for today:

In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.

To be learning organizations capitalizing on leading-edge knowledge, businesses and individuals must learn to learn quickly and continuously. What does that mean?

I believe as educators we must empower others to learn and then these individuals will know how to go about acquiring the knowledge they need when they need it and how they need it at the time they need it.

Evolution Too Slow

In this time of revolutionary change, it is no longer possible to wait for evolutionary development of courses and then for lengthy accreditation procedures to meet the growing and changing demands of today's society.

As indicated in their book The Monster Under the Bed: How Business Is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), Stan Davis and Jim Botkin have two messages that hit home to me. One is that organizations and individuals must "learn to earn" and the second is that organizations and individuals must take the lead in education as academia falls too far behind current and emerging developments and, therefore, needs.

Especially in terms of technology and other specific requirements, businesses have been forced to take the lead in education and are spending millions and probably billions doing so. Their premise is that meanwhile academic leaders are trying to reform the old system rather than embracing new forms that better meet the needs of students today and in the future.

Higher education engenders higher costs and impacts organizations in ways that force them to become leaner as they become more knowledge driven. This, say Botkin and Davis, will involve taking risks in search of results, building relationships, focusing on research, and recognizing there is a rivalry between schools and the business learning facility.

Do you believe this is so?

Learning Castes

One of these risks could be the further separation of those who have the means available to take advantage of advancing technology and learning tools and those who do not. As John Hibbs, a pioneer in distance education, said to me "Leaving five billion behind is not an option!"

Will these new forms of learning do as Davis and Botkin warn and deepen the division between social classes? If they do, how can these chasms be narrowed?

Hibbs continues with part of the suggested solution:

The saddest thing of all is not that five billion have never touched a keyboard, but that very few of those 5 billion could give you a compelling reason why it was necessary to have keyboard skills. The value of community radio is that they are in position to motivate large portions of the five billion on why a trip to a nearby telecenter could make life better for those willing...

The focus of GLD5 is to demonstrate the linkage between radio, telecenters, distance education, distance training and jobs - including tele-jobs. Because of its reach, I might well argue that the most important of all those elements is radio. I could also argue that too many in the technology world have forgotten just how extensive is the reach of radio; or how powerful is its messaging capability.

I don't say that radio - all alone is THE answer. I think it is PART of the answer - the motivating part. The education and training part will come via the 'net. Radio gets them to the keyboard.

How do we bring all those technologies together and make learning real, inexpensive, accessible and empowering?

How do we take the focus off the technology and ensure it is only the background - the means to an end rather than the end itself?

How do we ensure education is two-way (between learner and learning facilitator) or multi-way (facilitator, learners and peer-to-peer)?

New Forms Must and Will Prevail

If traditional academia is failing with past paradigms, what shift will bring education into the focus it needs? Distance education may be a more cost- and time-effective way to do so. Through methods such as e-learning, tele-learning and other fast and more easily accessible methods for growing knowledge every day - constantly and continuously - we can be empowered to take charge of meeting our own needs as they arise.

We can go one step further than Davis and Botkin suggest. We can learn to learn first and foremost so that we as individuals can take charge of the method most convenient, cost-effective and timely for us.

The opportunity to match readiness-to-learn with just-in-time courses and knowledge collaboration with thought leaders helps us tap into the Global Brain and co-create new knowledge to design better jobs and produce greater income for our organizations and ourselves today and in the future.

What does this mean to us as a society?

Will we never take time to learn in a setting removed from our work?

Will we be just consumers on the other end of computers, telephones, satellite televisions, radios and other forms of distance education?

Can these modes allow the human interaction between learner and facilitator and among peers that have been proven to aid learning?

What about the experience of actual hands-on experimentation?

We know there are many shortcomings in traditional education but there may be equally as many in distance education. It is possible to throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater, if we don't take care.

Virtual Dinner Party

Places are being set at our virtual dinner party table

We leave you with more questions than we answered. That is why we want you to join us and contribute your thoughts, ideas and fears. After all the monsters and dragons are out there! We must slay them together.

Join our virtual dinner party to be held from 2:00-4:00 p.m. Mountain Time (4:00-6:00 ET) on October 7, 2001 to hear what other business leaders and educators have to say.

Your host for this presentation will be Xenia Stanford, President, Stanford Solutions Inc. and Editor-in-Chief, KnowMap: The Knowledge Management, Auditing and Mapping Magazine at www.knowmap.com.

My role will be to keep the conversation flowing like the wine as I introduce my special invited guests and they add their comments, questions and pieces of solutions to the food for thought on the table.

My special invited guests so far include:

	Debra M. Amidon, Chief Executive Officer, Entovation International, Ltd.
	Steve Eskow, President, Pangaea Network and Electronic University
	Gary W. James, Instructional Technologist
	Michael Losier, Co-Director of TeleClass International
	Barbara Weaver Smith, President of Smith Weaver Smith, Inc.

Others will be added here as they are invited and agree to partake in our virtual dinner party.

We will also be inviting people in the Entovation 100 network, those on the Global Knowledge Leadership Map (see www.entovation.com/kleadmap/page1.htm for links to both) and many others to drop in on the party and to send pre-GLD comments as party appetizers. We will publish these in Comments on The Education Scare - The Monster is Out There!

We invite all of you to join in as drop-in guests. Crash the party - the more the merrier!

Can't be there or just want to be sure you are heard before the party? Send your comments to Editor, KnowMap and we will add them to the above listed comments page.

Additional Sources

The following publications, most of which are full-text at the link provided, may provide further background information and add fuel to the debate on the barriers and benefits of both distance and traditional education:

American Council on Education: Offices of Government Relations, Public Affairs, and General Counsel. Developing a Distance Education Policy for 21st Century Learning. Last Modified: March 21, 2000. www.acenet.edu/washington/distance_ed/2000/03march/distance_ed.html

Amidon, Debra M. The Innovation Superhighway". www.entovation.com/whatsnew/superhighway.htm

Distance Education: An International Journal. Cumulative Index, Vol. 1-16. (See www.odlaa.org/publications.htm for more information)

Galusha, Jill M. "Barriers to Learning in Distance Education", The Infrastruction Network (Article dated 1997. Accessed September 5, 2001). www.infrastruction.com/barriers.htm

Klass, Gary. "Plato as Distance Education Pioneer: Status and Quality Threats of Internet Education", First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet, volume 5, number 7, July 2000. http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_7/klass/index.html

Mielke, Dan. "Effective Teaching in Distance Education", Eric Digest, December 1999. (September 5, 2001). www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed436528.html

E-Learning Expo Europe and Asia. www.elearnexpo.com/ (See what they have done and are doing.)

The Beginning Not the End

This is not meant to be a complete list but a partial one to whet the appetite before our party.

Remember, if you have any appetizers to contribute before the big party on Global Learn Day V (October 7, 2001), send your best citations, links and comments on this topic to Editor, KnowMap

Win three complimentary issues of KnowMap, if we use any of your submissions!

Works Cited

Davis, Stan and Jim Botkin. The Monster Under the Bed: How Business Is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994 (See Review)

Hibbs, John. From a telephone conversation August 15, 2001 and e-mail exchange September 4,2001 between John Hibbs and Xenia Stanford.

Hoffer, Eric (1902-1983). Reflections on the Human Condition. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.


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