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So excited that William J. Pepicello, the University of Phoenix’s president, is looking for "media" opportunities. Dr. Pepicello, I'd like to offer you an opportunity to participate in this blog, and the price is zero!
Below are a few questions that I'd like to ask. Please send your replies to editor@insidehighered.com and we will post them on this blog. A much better deal than whatever you got from NBC.
Question 1 - Technology: What Learning Management System (LMS) does U of P utilize? Is your LMS complemented by other learning technologies for rapid authoring, synchronous meetings, or presentation capture tools? Is U of P utilizing any Web 2.0 tools for teaching, or planning to do so in the future? Where do you see learning technology for online and hybrid teaching going in the future?
Question 2 - Course Development Methodology: My understanding is that U of P has invested a great deal of energy and resources into your course design and development methodology. What would you think of making these course development methodologies available to non-profit institutions using a Creative Commons license? Sharing your course design and development methodology would, I think, go a long way towards creating goodwill for U of P in our education community.
Question 3 - Teaching Materials: Have you thought about making the teaching materials, lectures, simulations, media, assessments, etc. etc. available under Creative Commons for your non-profit peers? Due to your scale, U of P could create an amazing portal of educational materials - using M.I.T. OpenCourseware http://ocw.mit.edu as a model. Sharing your teaching materials with non-profits would instantly tie U of P into the greater educational community, and serve as a great justification for all the public money that has flowed into U of P through educational loans. You could brand all your shared educational content, opening up a whole new marketing channel.
Question 4 - Infrastructure: U of P must have an enormous and robust technological scale to support all of your programs and students (we'd love to hear about it if you are willing). What about offering the U of P e-learning infrastructure free of charge to public institutions, particularly community colleges? U of P could offer e-learning as a service, again with no charge, allowing resource strapped public institutions a method to save dollars devoted to e-learning technology. Given your scale this offer probably would not add much in the way of marginal costs, and you could scale it up institution by institution. A great public relations move, for very little cost.
Question 5 - An Institute: My last question is about a U of P Institute for online/hybrid course development and teaching. Wouldn't it be great if U of P put together this Institute, and invited education professionals from non-profits to participate free of charge. U of P could make this a competitive process, selecting small cohorts of classes each year to go through the U of P training at your Institute. Graduates of the U of P Institute could then bring back the best practices and materials from U of P to implement on their campus. The rest of the higher education community would gain some insight into your processes, and you would create relationships with colleagues from your non-profit peer institutions.
Dr. Pepicello, I look forward to starting the discussion.
