The next generation of digital learning leadership.

A Q&A with Romy Ruukel.

Spending some time with the 2018 edition of Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends presentation should lead higher ed people to draw the following conclusions:

1. Mary Meeker is not hanging out with instructional designers.
2. Higher education is maybe less on Meeker’s mind than it is on ours.
3. Money people want to talk more about lifelong learning than they want to talk about the future of higher education.

On conclusion No. 1, all that needs to be said is that Meeker gleefully violates all the guidelines that presenters are given for constructing their slides. As presenters, we are told that PowerPoint is a poor medium for information transmission. That dense materials with many data points do not lend themselves well to PowerPoint, or at least to presentations where PowerPoint is used. We are told that slides should drive emotional connections with a few big points or ideas that the audience will remember.

Well, maybe all that advice is wrong. Meeker creates perhaps the most important PowerPoint presentation of each year.

For conclusion No. 2, I can’t help but to feel a bit — well — left out. How is that we can spend all of our energy talking about higher education, only to have Mary Meeker not talk about higher education at all?

Why is it that higher education is more interested in Mary Meeker than she is in us?

Perhaps the answer comes down to the fact that Meeker is a venture capitalist. Higher education remains largely a nonprofit business. The ed-tech sector may be too small to catch Meeker’s attention.

Still, I’d argue that in not considering the role of the internet and mobile in how postsecondary education is changing that Meeker is missing one of the big technology stories of our time.

For conclusion No. 3, that Meeker is interested in lifelong learning, I think the best thing to do is to share all the slides on this topic.

Slide 232 introduces the topic:

Here, Meeker’s big takeaway is that lifelong learning is critical for employers, and that the tools to continually retrain workers are improving.

Slide 233 is all about Coursera:

Meeker highlights the growth in the Coursera installed learner base — which is now up to a truly impressive 33 million. The top courses for 2017 are also listed.

Here I wish that Meeker had included data from edX. Combining the edX numbers of 15 million learners with Coursera’s would have been impressive. I also think that Meeker could have integrated the open online learning story with the growth of online learning for degree programs. These two stories are intermingled in a way that is not very well understood.

In slide 234 Meeker shares some lifelong learning numbers from YouTube:

I had no idea that YouTube got a billion daily views for learning videos. This slide also shows the impressive growth of platforms such as Khan Academy and TED-Ed between 2013 and 2018.

The story here, I think, is impact. Online video seems to be where the action is when it comes to just-in-time learning. What is interesting to me is that YouTube and other video platforms are not all that important, from an instructional standpoint, for colleges and universities. Online and mobile instructional video lives in a largely separate and distinct world from higher ed instruction. Why is that?

Slide 235 highlights what AT&T is doing for work-force training:

Meeker thinks that AT&T is the model for how companies should invest in a future-ready work force. The $ 1 billion that AT&T has allocated for employee training is truly impressive.

This slide makes me wonder if a wide enough array of colleges and universities are doing enough to partner with companies. I’d argue that we know how to do education. That Coursera and Udacity provide a commoditized platform, and that higher education knows about authentic learning.

Some schools, such as Arizona State University, are doing a great job in partnering with companies for lifetime employee education. At other schools, this work with companies happens mostly in business schools, and in executive education divisions.

It seems as if the opportunity for partnerships between higher ed and companies is much bigger than most of us realize.

Slide 236 presents data on how freelancers are upgrading their skills.

It is an interesting question of how universities can become more relevant to gig workers. How many of our graduates will be freelancers? And what lifelong education opportunities are we offering to them?

Here is the full deck of Meeker’s Internet Trends 2018.

There is a new sort of gig in higher ed: the digital learning innovation evangelist.

Who are these people? What do they do? Are their jobs really different from leadership roles that have come before? What is their professional home? What is their professional association? And where do they gather?

These are all good questions.

One place where I’ll be trying to get some answers is this summer’s SOLA+R: Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable.

This University Professional and Continuing Education Association event brings together folks who are thinking about digital and online learning through an institutional lens.

I’ve gotten involved in UPCEA through my work as an (unpaid) fellow for the association’s National Council for Online Education.

Where does this convening fit in with other meetings for digital/online learning evangelists? I’d classify SOLA+R as a convening that is similar to HAIL Storm (Harvesting Academic Innovation for Learners), in that the event brings together a relatively small number of digital learning innovators to share knowledge and resources and ideas.

Unlike HAIL, which is purely a grassroots effort, SOLA+R is under a larger professional organization umbrella — UPCEA.

The reason that I’m excited about participating in SOLA+R is that I’m looking for a community of practice that recognizes online learning as a powerful lever for organizational change.

Over the past few years many colleges and universities have created these sorts of roles. They go by different names. Sometimes the position is a dean, provost or a director for digital learning innovation.

Other times the role of institutional digital learning evangelist falls to leaders in online and continuing education programs. Sometimes, the push for digital learning innovation comes from units such as academic computing or centers for teaching and learning (CTLs).

While those serving in digital learning innovation roles have different titles and different job responsibilities, they do have some things in common. Mostly, this is a community that is impatient with incremental improvements in postsecondary learning, issues of access, or business models.

This is a community that looks at digital and online learning as a means, rather than as ends. The ultimate goal is not to create more online programs or digitally enhanced blended courses — although those are good — but rather to drive big changes in the way universities fulfill their mission within a rapidly changing knowledge economy.

These big changes may be about bringing quality higher education to scale, shifting the economics of both learning and credentialing from scarcity to abundance.

Or these big changes may mean leveraging the methods of online learning, such backwards course design and partnerships with learning designers, to dramatically improve learning at traditional residential institutions.

Others who work as digital learning evangelists look at digital and online education as an opportunity to improve the resilience and long-term economic viability of the institutions in which they work.

What all the folks working in the digital learning innovation evangelist role need are communities of practice, colleagues and support/resources to do their jobs (our jobs) more effectively.

The June SOLA+R convening will be an important nexus for discussions at the intersection of digital/online learning and organizational change. UPCEA’s National Council for Online Education is dedicated to convening and supporting this emerging community of practice.

One of the advantages that I’ve found in my work with UPCEA is the associations focus on federal and state policy. It is difficult for those of us outside of the Beltway to understand how policy is made that impacts our world of digital and online learning — much less how to have any impact on the process. I expect that the role of government and online learning will be a big focus at the SOLA+R D.C. gathering.

From what I understand, there is still some space available at the June 18-20 SOLA+R convening in Washington. (Although space will not remain open for long, as this is an intimate and intense gathering).

It will be interesting to see if other professional organizations in our space carve out smaller and more focused convenings/organizations to bring together digital learning innovation evangelists.

Can anyone share what is going on with OLC, Educause, WCET or others in this space?

If you, like me, are searching for your people at the intersection of digital/online learning and organizational change then I hope to see you at SOLA+R this summer in D.C.