"If we can change the price and performance of bandwidth and long distance, if we can collapse distance and time, something big is going to happen.'' - Joseph Nacchio, CEO Qwest Communications

 "If you're not scared, you don't understand"- Mike O'Dell, CTO UUNet

 "We're scared and we still don't understand"- David Isenberg, technology consultant

 This paper starts with the premise that something big is going to happen to higher education in general and the University of Baltimore in particular as a tidal wave of fast inexpensive bandwidth engulfs us over the next few years. The movement toward web- based teaching is just one manifestation of technological change. This paper is not for those who are not yet convinced that major change is coming and is necessary. Instead, this paper is directed to those who feel we can plan for the advent of the new technology and design new programs now. Unfortunately we can no more plan for the new technology than the mid-nineteenth century coal field owner could plan for the revolution that the discovery of oil was going to bring. We cannot plan but there are steps that we can take.

 Our Enduring Mental Models

 To plan within the teaching model that we know now for something that is as revolutionary as inexpensive, fast bandwidth, is to guarantee paradigm blindness. Our paradigms, our mental models of the world, "our basic ways of perceiving, thinking and valuing" are seldom stated explicitly, instead they exist as unquestioned understandings. To not question our mental models leaves us certain to catch the deadly illness of paradigm blindness. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk" said H.M. Warner in 1927. "The concept (FedEx) is interesting, but in order to earn better than a 'C' the idea must be feasible" said Fred Smith's professor in business school. To be blinded to new ways of doing things by our current beliefs is to be human, but there are steps that we can take to mitigate the damage. The steps are be humble! Be humble! Be humble! Understanding that as Karl Popper put it "our ignorance is sobering and boundless" is the penicillin for paradigm blindness.

Cheap fast bandwidth will revolutionize learning and pedagogy. However, when we attempt to meet this challenge through planning we can only draw up plans within paradigms that we already know. Therefore, we believe that web teaching is putting our lecture slides or the publisher's textbook slides on the web. This is not likely to be what web-teaching will become. We can learn a lesson from the early days of television. In the first television ads an announcer stood in front of the mike reading radio copy. No one in 1950 could have conceived of a television advertisement of 1960 or 1998. Planning by design locks erroneous misconceptions into place. Thus to announce now that 'web-teaching will be as follows' is the equivalent of forever entrenching the 1950 television ad.  I can hear the concerns voice by my colleagues- 'but we have to do something.' Doing something can be worse that doing nothing, but I am not going to propose doing nothing. But before we can do anything innovative we need to be reminded of Dee Hock's (founder and former CEO of Visa) maxim: "the problem is never how to get the new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out".

Here are some of our mental models about higher education that I believe are about to be overthrown:

• Students are viewed as scarce commodities to be competed for. The arena of competition local, regional, or national varies only depending upon the reputation of the school. High exit barriers, particularly in graduate school, in the form of difficulties in transferring credits block students from choosing courses from many different schools in a degree program.
• Current pedagogies will continue indefinitely. The dominant pedagogy is still what one student colorfully called "tell them and test them". In this model, the student is the passive learner and the professor has the information. To be sure, marginal changes such as group work have been introduced into this pedagogy but the primary learning source of learning in this model is the professor. The focus, in this model is on providing information and not creating knowledge.
• Demographics are the prime mover of student enrollment.

• Most courses can be taught using "tell them and test them" pedagogies by professors providing little more than information.
• The challenge of Internet teaching is thought of in the context of how to get the professors notes (or worse the Publishers slides for the book being used) on the web.
• Little or no attention is paid to the questions of appropriate pedagogies for this new medium.
• The essential facts about what is needed to respond to new challenges are assumed to be knowable rather than something to be discovered.

Not only do our paradigms make it difficult to change but innovation within a paradigm is likely to fail. Tom Peters is quoted as saying " big organizations don't change they die". In the 1800's hauling icebergs and chopping them up provided ice. With the advent of the icemakers, not one icehauler made the transition to selling ice through icemakers. Why? They saw their business as hauling ice not as providers of ice. Similarly with the rise of the steam engine the only reaction of sailing ships was to try and make their boats go faster. Had they seen themselves as providing transportation instead of sailboat services, they may have met the challenge of adopting the new technology. The cautionary tale for the University is clear: are Universities centers that facilitate learning or centers that provide courses that we fill with students? The answer will determine the survival of the University.

We are at the point that we recognize that new competition is coming and that change is necessary. Unfortunately at this point we may be like the 19^th century sailing ships, reacting by trying to go faster. At this point proposals as to the length of a web-course etc. are more than premature; they beg the real questions. We have barely started the process of experimenting with new web pedagogies. Putting our notes on the web is a not a new pedagogy. Instead putting our notes on the web is simply translating what we do now into a new medium - the equivalent of the television announcer reading radio ads. An obvious question is what segment of the student market would pay to read our lecture notes on the web and consider this an education. I think there may be such a segment, more interested in buying a degree then in genuine learning. Do we want to position ourselves for this segment? To be sure, that model will for sure enjoy some demand from a group of students who are buying a degree.

 At this point, the cynic may wonder why students will not flock to "buying degrees". There are good reasons why this is impossible. One is the reputation of a school that does this would quickly suffer. The competitive nature of an increasingly worldwide job market puts pressure on students to migrate to institutions that genuinely facilitate learning. As economist and futurist James Davidson explains due to technology: "the economic value of memorization as a skill will fall while the importance of synthesis and creative application of material will rise." We are falling years behind other schools in thinking about genuinely new course designs, trying collaborative learning experiments and rethinking the role of professor and student.

 Knowledge vs. Information

 The logic of inexpensive fast bandwidth is clear; the price of information will fall at an ever-exponential rate. Universities in the business of selling information will find the price that they can get for this information everfalling. We can learn something from the experience of the Encyclopedia Britannica- they priced their first CD ROM version at over a $1000. They may have reasoned: we are the Britticanna, we have always charged a premium price and are entitled to a premium over our competitors. When they faced the reality that the price of information had fallen, they cut their price to $299 and finally to $79 (with rebate).

 Although the price of information has fallen, the cost of creating new knowledge has not fallen as rapidly. Knowledge is not the same as information. Information is simply facts, knowledge involves conceptual understanding and is frequently tacit. Educator Parker Palmer explains that knowledge is knowing something with familiarity gained through experience. In other words, what we make of information. Due to technology there is little value added in providing information relative to facilitating the growth of knowledge.

 Knowledge as distinguished from information, is the capacity to use creatively information. In the age of information, the value of someone who can creatively use information has gone up and thus the value of knowledge has gone up. How does this effect higher-ed? The "tell them and test them" model of education, where students are seen to be empty vessels waiting to be filled up with knowledge from the all wise professor is a relic. A relic that was always antithetical to the human spirit but made some economic sense when the value of creative thinking was less important. In today's global fast changing world innovation is crucial and to simply imitate is a recipe for disaster. Thus a course that does not teach students how to creatively apply and synthesize material, but simply teaches them a textbook's distillation of important information and formulas will find that too is a relic. It will find that, as the Encyclopedia Britannica whose print version, before the age of information, could sell for a multiple of its CD-ROM version, the market price of such a course will fall dramatically. Putting our lecture notes online and then giving multiple choice tests on line will not be the new model of higher education.

It is my belief that technology will not create a cold sterile climate where students learn solely by setting in front of a computer screen. Instead the climate will be rich in personal interaction and collaborative learning. This new learning climate will create new opportunities for the university to improve upon its traditional role of facilitating the discovery of new knowledge. Technology expedites the process by which new knowledge is created because it facilitates the discovery of what is meaningful and facilitates a collaborative discovery process.

 Some Thoughts on Collaborative Learning

Nobody knows specifically what new pedagogies look like. We can consider what general principles will drive the new pedagogies while being unable to predict the form the new pedagogies will take. Technology reduces the cost of information and of collaboration. Our age of innovation and entrepreneurship will value students who can creatively apply material just as the factory age valued students who passively followed orders. This will lead to the following changes:

• Learning will become increasingly a process for which the student is equally responsible for and not something that is done to them by the instructor.
• Students will become active acquirers of knowledge instead of passive acquirers of information.
• Students will increasingly value that which resonates from their own life-long learning experience rather than passively valuing that which they have been told.
• Learning will be a continuous process rather than taking place at a fixed time and place.
• Curriculum will be driven by the marketplace and thus the needs of students rather than by the needs of the faculty and the institutions. Much as the Internet is underspecified to met the needs of its users, the curriculum of the future will be reduced in specification.

 Useful Knowledge Is Dispersed

Since we are not in the habit of questioning our paradigms, many of the important questions in life do not surface or are assumed to have given answers. So as we consider the important questions of how to respond to changing technology, pedagogy is assumed to be given. In his seminal essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society" Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek pointed out that assuming important knowledge to be given begs the whole question since we are assuming that which we do not know and can only discover.

Thus the challenge is not how to utilize a given body of knowledge about which we can all agree. Instead Hayek points out that our actual problem "is a problem of the utilization of knowledge that is not given to anyone in its totality." In other words the knowledge that we need to develop new pedagogies does not exist in concentrated form but can only be discovered. Our challenge becomes how to utilize, discover and grow useful knowledge about how to meet the challenges of technology.

Planning for Change by Design vs. The Discovery Process

What we can all agree on is the need to meet the challenges of technology. What we do not agree on is how to get there. I believe we can discover the components of a new program but not design them. The difference is more than semantical. Design implies a Newtonian world where all works like an orderly machine. Just put the pieces together and start the engine. This world of management through design is ending as quickly as technology’s growth rate becomes more exponential. It is ending because human design can not adopt to change as quickly as a decentralized trial and error.

 To discover new pedagogies, the first step is to see the "old furniture" in our mental models that clutter our mind and inhibit discovery. The major problem to overcome is the belief that we can ‘design’ and plan new web programs. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek reminds us we typically conceive "of order only as as the product of deliberate arrangements." We all desire more order in the sense that more of our expectations are met. However, Hayek points out that "in complex conditions order and adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions."

 What Hayek is referring to is that in addition to a familiar hierarchical forms of order there are self-generating spontaneous orders. No one invented language, it evolved through the interaction of millions. The Internet is the ultimate example of a spontaneous order. A chief characteristic of spontaneous orders is that "its degree of complexity is not limited to what the human mind can master." Thus Netscape for instance plans to take advantage of the spontaneous order by releasing the source code for its browsers and allowing non Netscape developers to modify the browser for their own uses. In doing so Netscape plans on unleashing the discovery forces inherent in a spontaneous order to morph their browser in features past Microsoft's.

 In the physical sciences complexity theory presents many of the same ideas as Hayek. The differences between a linear Newtonian systems and complex systems have major implications as we think about responding to new technologies:

• Complex systems are self-organizing, they are from equilibrium and they allow for discovery and entrpreneurship. Newtonian systems are closed systems tending toward equilibrium.
• Complex systems are inherently unpredictable but not random. Newtonian systems are predictable.
• Complex systems are synergistic and very sensitive to initial conditions. Newtonian systems are additive and not very sensitive to initial conditions.

Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa, uses the word Chaord to denote a firm that embraces the principles of creating order out of seeming chaos. He points out that when Visa was founded it was "beyond the power of reason to design an organization to deal with such complexity and beyond the reach of imagination to perceive all the conditions it could encounter."

Thus 'design' by decentralized discovery allows experimentation to discover what really works. A discovery process can only take place one step at a time. So what can we do to begin this discovery process of new Internet pedagogies and move the school forward? Setting the conditions that make experimentation possible is necessary. The preconditions that are necessary to ignite the discovery process are for both simple incentives and infrastructure to be in place.

So What Can We Do?

 "People ask: Where's the plan? How do we implement it? But that's the wrong question because an organization isn't a machine that can be built according to a blueprint"- Dee Hock

 "If you prune long- if you are tolerant…you may not have this year's largest roses, but you have increased the chances that you'll have roses every year."- Arie De Geus

 "…the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated forms but solely as dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess."- F.A. Hayek

The discovery process is like going up a flight of stairs in the pitch black. As you step on the first step, the second step lights up, but not until you step on the second step does the third step light up. The seduction of rational planning is clear, it gives us the delusion of control. However, our delusions stifle discovery and innovation. The spontaneous order has no power until it is relied on. So like a non-swimmer taking a swimming class and learning of the principle of flotation we cannot get the benefits of the discovery process until we go in the ocean and try to float.

If we understand that useful knowledge is dispersed and that 'there are no ultimate sources of knowledge' then we realize that our challenge is to create the conditions so that knowledge that is not given to anyone in totality can be utilized. Here are some ideas:

• Dee Hock warns us that "an organization's success has more to do with clarity of shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability or management competence, important as they may be." Just as a market place depends upon the 'rule of law' and property rights to function properly, the workplace is dependent upon proper values and conduct to function efficiently. Wayne Gable and Jerry Ellig, of George Mason University, have itemized some of the values that allow decentralized knowledge to be efficiently utilized. They are "humility, intellectual honesty, openness, receptiveness to new ideas, treating others with dignity and respect and recognizing and using everyone's unique knowledge and abilities." It goes without saying then that hoarding information, and staking out a position without developing an understanding to support it are damaging to the mission of the organization.
• Another precondition to growing and utilizing knowledge, is to improve the flow of information and the capacity to collaborate in the University. Yet, the school has very little in collaborative software. We do not have an Intranet. Software such as Lotus Domino/Notes is a billion-dollar business because it allows companies to save money through reducing the cost of collaboration. This software is expensive but many schools have purchased such software because it facilitates professor/student collaboration. Anything that facilitates new ways of collaborating with students will be useful to discovering new pedagogies. Trying to experiment with new pedagogies without powerful collaborative software is like trying to teach without a blackboard thirty years ago.
• Related to this point reform and decentralization of CIS has to be discussed and implemented. A centralized bureaucracy making decisions on the purchase of software and other issues flies in the face of what the new technology and Internet is bringing. The Internet in the words of David Isenberg is a 'dumb' network in that its intelligence lies in the users and providers and not in a centralized core. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT warns that the concept of a CIS director with centralized power is an anachronism. Again UB has no Intranet, no collaborative software. UB has no mechanism for experimentation, no experimental server to try new software and new pedagogies.
• Compensation and incentives, in meaningful monetary rewards, are necessary to encourage experimentation and grow new knowledge. Taking this step would also involve a genuine dialogue in the University community on the nature of being professor. Resources are fixed and real choices have to be made between rewarding genuine innovations in teaching, significant research and trivial 'research ' papers that will never be read by more than the editor, referees and author. At the same time, those who are rewarded for experimental teaching have to be held accountable. Besides providing monetary rewards, providing real incentives means that any professor not in the business of pushing forward their teaching horizons in a demonstrable way will be evaluated as unsatisfactory in their job performance.
• Many will find the above strong medicine. In any case, stronger medicine in the form of market discipline is coming our way. In some instances tenure gives perverse incentives not to innovate, to do unimportant research, to neglect responsibilities to students. In large measure tenure is a non-market response to state and federal subsidization of higher education. When tenure ends is a political decision and cannot be predicted. Increasingly though professors that can not field courses which are marketable nationally will be themselves unmarketable. Unfortunately, in some quarters of academia the market is anathema. We cannot continue to defend courses and curriculum that are no longer meeting tests of market viability and usefulness. The role of the academy in helping to facilitate the growth of knowledge and our obligations to that are paramount.
• In recognition that increasingly the arena of competition for all institutions will be virtual and national, the University should explore alliances and consortiums with other schools. Such alliances and consortiums would allow students to take and transfer courses from any school in the network. The goal is to get the network as big as possible. The message of the Internet is that closed proprietary systems fail. Apple computer had a superior product, but by failing to license their hardware they kept their price artificially high and dramatically lost market share.
• We must embrace the liberating aspects of competition rather than fear them. Workers in Silicon Valley have fun because they are innovating. Protection from change is anathema to the human spirit. It stifles our own personal discovery process.

Organizations "can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the people drawn to them; of their character, judgment, acts and efforts."- Dee Hock