BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Comments

Self-promotion vs. Reality

[DynaSoar]

Wiley is, according to TFA, a professor of psychology and instructional technology. He is not listed among BYU psychology faculty, even visiting. The department he belongs to is called "Instructional Psychology and Technology", which is academi-bloat for "education". His bio is sparse, not stating what his psychology background is. If he has any, it is almost certainly 'soft' psychology, rather than nuts & bolts research. Since one of his interests is in technology, I recommend he visit a working neuroscience lab. The width and depth of technology used in such work will certainly spin his wheels. But he'll also see the situations in which hands on research can't possibly be simulated realistically. As much problem solving goes into designing and getting running as into answering the question of interest -- things go wrong and the student has to learn to make them go right.

To his credit another of his interests in in intellectual property law and open source licensing. That doesn't erase the fact that he's speaking outside his own box when he claims face to face education is doomed.