Student-centric shift means
the cloud-based campus is here to stay

THE AUSTRALIAN
February 24, 2021
KEITH HOUGHTON, KEVIN MA, EDMUND LAI and GEORGE AVELING

The world of Australian higher education was forced to ask new questions in 2020. Those questions gave rise to new answers, insights and opportunities, and for some they have become questions about what survival looks like.

The traditionally labour-intensive higher education sector was forced to ask a previously unthinkable question: how can it conduct business as usual in a virtual environment? In this changed environment, the physical campus was moved to the cloud.

There are similarities and differences between physical and virtual campuses.

The traditional campus has administrative and library buildings, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and spaces where students meet and make informal contact. Lecturers have offices to meet students. There are support and administration departments. Students become familiar and comfortable with their campus layout.

Let’s convert that physical experience to the online world. The campus real estate is located in a cloud-based platform and, as now, includes a learning management system or, in future, a learning experience platform (LXP).

Inside a well-developed LMS or LXP there can be many virtual spaces for student learning. There are spaces where live teaching occurs, audio-visual spaces where videos of lectures and other resources are showing, spaces where resources in many formats are housed, spaces where students get together, collaborate and share, spaces where students can contact their lecturers or administration. Across time, students will find the layout of this cloud campus comfortable.

The ability to have seamless consistency of the on-cloud learning experience is a game changer. The integrity of the academic content developed remains unchanged and the need for a physical experience also remains for some subjects, but only where physical proximity to learning materials (think surgery or music) or to fellow students is crucial.

The key opportunities lie in the student learning experience. A significant shift is around flexibility and individualisation of the student experience. Class attendance at fixed times in fixed places is replaced by anytime and anywhere learning on the cloud campus. Learning moves from the lecturer-centric to student-centric.

Some may be tempted to re-create traditional pedagogic teaching methodologies in a digital format. This often occurred last year with the emergency development of online teaching. Students tolerated this; there was little choice. Moving beyond this, the virtual world provides opportunities to reinvent the student learning experience. This is made possible by the increasingly sophisticated array of learning technologies available at ever lower cost.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play an increasingly important role. AI enables the analysis of learning data. The vast bulk of student inquiries to lecturers and administrative support will be dealt with by virtual assistants, powered by AI. Answers from AI-based virtual assistants will be consistent. This drives significant savings.

Second, and crucially, student learning performance will be enhanced by AI-powered adaptive learning technologies. Adaptive learning helps personalise a student’s learning experience and provides lecturers with real-time data on student progress.

This technology has already been successful in the corporate sector and there are some university applications, including at least one in Australia.

On a traditional campus, there is reliance on live lectures, now known as synchronous learning. On the cloud campus, there will be a growing use of asynchronous learning; pre-recorded learning materials. When executed well, they provide a consistency in the learning experience and they save academic time. The new wave of asynchronous learning is interactive with innovations that enable the asking and answering of questions in real-time.

In a virtual world, lecturers will move away from being the centre of the learning experience to being a part of a learning community. In this world, learning is social. Students can deepen each other’s learning. The technology here is based on the technology of social media. Within this social world, learner motivation can be increased through gamification, which applies the principles of game design to learning.

There are challenges. An example of this is in large-scale assessment. There are some answers to these challenges and more are coming.

A pipedream? This learning approach is not new. The corporate world, particularly in Asia, is regularly using these methodologies now and is doing so in a commercially viable way. A study by US-based consultancy Brandon Hall Group indicated that 77 per cent of US companies in their population of interest used online learning in 2017.

As concerns about the pandemic ebb and flow, we will see campus life return to “normal” — at least for some. However, universities now know that they can operate in a boundaryless world. Students can be drawn from across state, national and international boundaries.

In this world, the concept of university education will move from a dichotomy of on-campus and on-cloud to the student learning experience. In short, but to varying degrees, the cloud-based campus will be here to stay.

There is a burning platform. Will international students want an Australian onshore experience in the same numbers? How fast will Australian universities strengthen their cloud campuses to support students resident in Australia as well as those overseas? How will universities manage cashflow challenges of revenue uncertainty and transition costs. And, of equal importance, how quickly will regulation change to facilitate offshore learning opportunities?

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge will be attuned to these issues given work done several years ago when in opposition, but he has no time to waste helping the sector to adapt to the new reality.

At the time of posting of this article on the C2C website the authors are: Emeritus Professor Keith Houghton, Kevin Ma, Edmund Lai and George Aveling all hold executive roles at the digital learning enablement firm Campus2Cloud headquartered in Parkville, Melbourne.