In my preliminary investigation into disruptive innovation in higher education, I’ve come across a commonly held belief that online education is a disruptive innovation (Archer, Garrison and Anderson and Horn are advocates). This frustrates me as it seems to fundamentally miss the point of disruption.
For those of you not familiar with Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, the basic premise is that there are two types of innovation – sustaining, which improves on systems and procedures but does not fundamentally change the way they are undertaken, and disruptive, which may not initially seem like an improvement (cheaper, less robust etc) but completely changes the way in which systems and procedures happen, and opens them up to new markets.
Therein lies the rub. Most advocates of online education cite the fact that online education is available to new markets, and initially seemed like an inferior way of delivering education, but has become massively popular. Now to the last point, I won’t argue that online education is a huge market, and I certainly won’t argue that people often think it’s inferior to face to face learning. But to the first point, have we really made education available to new markets online? I know there’s a lot of song and dance currently around OERs and the likes of Khan Academy, but in terms of formal tertiary education, I don’t believe we are accessing new markets at all.
The reason? Online education in its current form isn’t disruptive. It allows education to be delivered in more or less the same format it always has – lectures, readings, essays, exams. It certainly isn’t cheaper (perhaps to deliver, but students don’t pay less to take online units), and it’s not taking the lower end of the market by storm. Until we start designing online learning that is truly disruptive – that is, completely changes the way in which education is delivered – non-traditional markets are not going to engage with higher education, online or not.