Higher Education in the Cloud
February 24, 2009
Change typically occurs on an evolutionary basis, but some innovative changes can be quite disruptive resulting in significant re-alignments among competitors and reshaping entire industries. One industry that is currently being restructured is higher education. In his book, Disrupting Class, Harvard’s Dr. Clayton Christensen predicts that within the next ten years, half of all instruction will take place online. If Dr. Christensen is correct, traditional “brick and mortar” schools need to develop online programs or risk loosing many of their students.
There were not many more than 50,000 online students at the end of the 1990s. Now we have more than a million students involved in distance education – and this is just the beginning. Dr. Christiansen predicts that nearly 10% of all students will be taking their courses online by 2015 and that number will increase to nearly 50% by 2020.
Low-cost, easy access to high-speed networks is what initially enabled individuals to participate in online higher education. But to meaningfully engage in online education one still had to deal with a variety of technological issues, the solutions to which had a fairly significant cost. Until recently, online education still required the student to have access to significant computer power, PC-based applications, storage, and protection. Cloud computing is rapidly reducing the cost of distance learning by significantly reducing what online students need of have on their laptops and PCs, by moving the computer power, applications, storage, and security required for state-of-the-art to a virtual platform “in the clouds.”
What is emerging is a new world of online education in which students only need a low-cost “netbook” because nearly everything else they need will be found online. Rapid progress on open standards and content along with approaches to “virtualize” applications, storage, and critical services, is producing a revolution in online education that will enable much wider access and improved quality.
If the new Administration in Washington can provide the funds facilitating education in the cloud, we could be on the brink of the second revolution in distance learning. Inexpensive, high-speed Internet access led to the rapid growth of online higher education that we could call the first technology-driven revolution in higher education. Virtualized platforms and inexpensive netbooks are creating the second technology-driven revolution in distance learning – “Higher Education in the Cloud.”
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