Explaining leads to information

I’ve been trying to gain a better sense of the role universities will play in society in the future. At one point, we thought content was the value point of universities. Wrong. MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative changed that. Ok, then the interaction with faculty is the value point. And wrong again. Open communication and collaboration in online environments with networks of peers and experts gave us control over our interactions. Fine. Then the value point is accreditation. Yes, for now. Our ability to rate, review, comment, and provide feedback has increased with the development of the read/write web. I’m not sure how long we can build education’s value on the concept of accreditation. As I’ve frequently suggested, we can glean much insight from a field that has spent more time journeying down the path of shifting value from content to something else: the news/journalism/media industry.

Jay Rosen, in National Explainer, advocates a new role for journalists. Instead of presenting information, the objective is to assist readers and viewers in making sense of complex subject areas. The ability to do this rests on the journalists ability to provide coherent, memorable explanations. In my presentation at Madison a few weeks ago, I emphasized that the role of university may well become one of being a coherence-maker, helping learners make sense of information abundance and change. Sure, universities have always done this…but they have done so from a perspective of authority rather than engagement.