Undoubtedly IT will be critical to realizing these operational efficiencies, but even more important will be designing the most efficient processes and systems to automate. However, much of what needs to be done to register a student and provide other student support services is straightforward and will not provide sustainable competitive advantages, as foreign business processes can be bought, brought into an organization, and implemented, as I have heard my colleagues complain for years about the Banner implementation.
How much competitive advantage is an institution likely to derive when it is using the same business processes as everyone else, and has the same cost structure, having bought the same closed-source software packages? Not much, I think. In fact, in time I believe those functions will be outsourced and higher education institutions (HEIs) will only keep for itself the student-, parent-, and alumni-facing functions. These “customer” facing functions are what will allow one HEI to differentiate itself from the others, and the development of a powerful, distinct brand. Some of these functions include:
- Course design and some aspects of course development
- Teaching, tutoring, facilitation of student learning
- Marketing and Communication
It is for the effective delivery of these two first functions why involvement in the FLOSS communities will matter so much for HEIs. For a large, traditional university with a well-established full-time faculty interested in teaching, much like the UWI is, it would make very little sense to outsource course design or teaching, tutoring, or facilitation of student learning, since:
- Our teachers know our students better than anyone else and this knowledge can be developed into a competitive advantage for designing courses for them, provided that knowledge is complemented by generic teaching skills, constantly supplemented by teaching scholarship and research, and very importantly by information and communication technologies (ICTs) that allow for rapid adaptation of learning objects, and learning designs. I submit that these ICTs have to be FLOSS, since modifying the tools themselves will be a part of the core business of the University, that is, advancing the technology for teaching and learning. Some aspects of course development, such as the development of web pages and illustrative graphics are not complex and so can be readily outsourced if it is cost-effective. However, some types of learning objects can be quite complex and effective and the organization’s ability to rapidly develop and adapt them could conceivably become a source of competitive advantage.
- Teaching, tutoring, facilitation of student learning are way too little understood and complex at present, to be automated. The complexity and difficulty provides an opportunity for the organization to develop deep smarts in that area which can be leveraged for competitive advantage, so outsourcing is an unattractive option. Additionally, since teaching is believed to be one of the most effective means of stimulating learning in the student-turned-teacher, I believe that peer-to-peer and small group teaching and learning will become a larger part of our pedagogical practice, and this too will drive the demand for a wider variety of teaching and learning technology tools. As Ruth Sabean pointed out in the first post in this series, a ‘
developer culture ‘ in the HEI facilitates this kind of activity and reliance on external software companies to facilitate that kind of faculty and student-driven innovation is unlikely to be as successful.
