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Last week, I shared my idea for a new university-based center to study OPMs. I called this imaginary center COLS (Center for the Online Learning Scholarship).
I think that research on OPMs should be one element of a broader research agenda within the emerging cross-disciplinary academic field of learning innovation. (With the caveat that this emerging cross-disciplinary field is, at least at this point, not much more than an idea. See Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education.)
If I'm making the argument that I want to make, what I want to see is a Center for Learning Innovation Scholarship (CLIS - pronounced "klis"), or maybe the Center for the Study of Academic Innovation (CSAI -- pronounced "say").
Worryingly, there may be a high probability that I am better at conjuring up ideas for new academic centers than at persuading anyone of the wisdom of doing so.
At least that is the inescapable conclusion if you are on Twitter.
In response to my COLS piece, Tanya Joosten, author of Social Media for Educators: Strategies and Best Practices and the director of digital learning research and development and co-director of the National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancements (DETA) at UW Milwaukee, tweeted:
Tanya's sentiments that a new academic center is not needed to study OPMs were echoed by several colleagues that I also hugely respect. A sample of these tweets:
How to respond to Tanya, Trace, Phil and Ellen?
Shouldn't the fact that this diverse group of thinkers believes that a new center is a bad idea give me pause?
Probably.
So I want to keep this conversation going by turning the question around.
If a new industry-funded academic center is not the best way to study institution-led learning innovation, with research on the outcomes related to nonprofit/for-profit partnerships (OPMs) as part of that research agenda, then what is?
Can we agree that we have a deficiency of independent, data-driven, cross-institutional and hypothesis-driven research on how colleges and universities are changing concerning the construction of teaching and learning?
Are we on the same page that we don't have much evidence about the impact of OPMs on outcomes related to schools, students or educators?
Do we agree that there is not a body of literature that university leaders can draw on in deciding if working with an OPM is a good idea, and how best to structure and manage these partnerships?
Are professors of higher education, homed in departments or schools of education, doing this sort of applied research?
If unpacking the drivers and effects on the rise of the OPM industry is part of a broader research agenda -- one that looks at organizational change within universities to understand how postsecondary learning is changing -- then who is doing that scholarship?
The appeal of a new academic center, for me at least, is that it would be a place to do that research.
A center can follow the norms of academia, such as transparency and independence and evidence-based scholarship, while also aligning with a commitment that research should be applicable and relevant.
The type of research that we should be doing is clear. We need to study institution-led learning innovation. We need to study how colleges and universities are changing to align with learning science. We need to study how trends in economics, demographics, competition and policy are impacting the choices that schools are making around teaching and learning. We need to study OPMs.
What is less clear is how to do that research.
Who are the scholars of institution-led learning innovation? Who is doing critical, data-driven, cross-institutional research on OPMs? If a new academic center is not the place to do this scholarship, then where? If this scholarship can be built into the mission of existing university-based centers, then how? If the funding to conduct this research is not going to come from industry, then where will this funding be found?
If not a center, then what?
