A contribution from Ryan Lanham:

Recently the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article suggesting that universities are fairly conservative when it comes to the capacity to change in the face of financial crisis. Not much of a surprise. In other breaking news, Wales still wet, and head lice found in kindergartens. Indeed the Chronicle is a self parody when it runs these sorts of stories. One wonders who (else) reads them.

P2P savvy critics like Stephen Downes and George Siemens have long itched the mainstream of higher education for not being more progressive in embracing new modes of learning and new forms of access. They’re mostly ignored. And then there is the long-standing joke (I’ve heard it attributed to Henry Kissinger more than anyone) that the politics at universities are so fierce because the stakes are so low. One doesn’t have to dig very far to find a reliable caricature of fuss and feathers with sound and fury signifying nothing surrounding all things higher ed…along with a forward motion that is slightly less viscous than plate glass. Change is possible in so much as it comes with a new grant for a building, new center or institute with someone’s name on it.

There has been comfort in the ancient tree-filled quads and stodgy smells for alumni and students as much as faculty and administration. In the end, Mr. Chips evolved—if only a touch. The internal tension between dreamers and idealists and organizations of stone and mortar board could give enough opening light so that people were willing to carry on feeling as if they were part of something grand and timeless but also relevant–enough.

Yet when the technology crises start to impact student ethics, one wonders whether genuinely transformative spasms are not too far away.

Andy’s Black Hole is an excellent blog for tracking some of the catalytic effects of technology on learning. It notes the horizon shifters and possible change agents though with a healthy dose of skepticism about the pace of change likely to result from often very compelling ideas. Recently Andy covered a case at Ryerson University where a student helped others in a Facebook-based study group on a chemistry problem that counted for credit. He is charged with 146 counts of academic misconduct –one for all the students who used the facility. We don’t have all the facts, but the case on the surface seems totally absurd.

The means by which students are learning is changing. It is up to instructors to adapt—not students to avoid tools and their advocates who impel better collaboration and learning; those ARE the future. We are in the midst of a shift of communications and learning tools that is obviously without precedent, but it comes, apparently, as some surprise to the faculty of chemistry at Ryerson. And thus the rules of learning stumble on. So it goes. Some prof smells a cheat because a student didn’t follow the rules. Well, maybe, just maybe, consider changing the rules.

The hierarchy and individualism of higher education are beginning to come unspun, and P2P is at the root of a lot of the fraying. The problems arise from a grind of students who know information to be free, informal and accessible versus faculty who prepare journal articles for the care of typesetters and whose vision of knowing is linked to some cultural notion of a corpus to be mastered by an individual. The whole project is getting tired, and the rules need to change.

So far, no prominent institution has stepped up. MIT and others have put classes on the web, which is a start. But no major institution has systematically looked at technologies of learning and knowing with a mind toward substantive internal organizational and procedural change.

The most exciting moves are taking place in and around community colleges. These more dynamic and less institutional models may be the future if the prestige and Jane Austen-like qualities of the conventional orgs shatter all at once…and they just might. It’s hard to imagine all that money and status flushing away quickly, but one senses the swirl has begun.