Dive Brief:
- Campus Technology profiles the annual Future Trends Forum video chat, during which leaders from several liberal arts colleges detailed the efforts to combine on distance learning technology and innovation in 21st century teaching.
- Some schools discussed the difficulty of collaborating on EdX platforms, as varying campuses held contracts at different times and resource challenges prohibit flexibility to expand program offerings.
- Some attendees discussed the value of the Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning, which has helped member schools to redesign core curriculum courses for online learning and standardizes best practices for improving student outcomes.
Dive Insight:
Higher ed author Jeff Selingo has written on several occasions for The Washington Post that small liberal arts colleges will need to consider merger or consolidation to preserve their campuses and missions in the next 20 years. These meetings and the examples of collaboration appear to be among the first steps towards the inevitability that schools designed to function off the revenue of 3,000 students or more will not survive with just 1,500 enrolled every year.
Many schools, including community colleges and public institutions, should analyze the prospects of sharing common service contracts and technologies, as a pilot to what joined institutions may one day look like, and what kind of value it could add to a community or city.
[Source:-Education Dive]
