Peder Saether Symposium (March 9-10, 2000)

Dr. Tilman Küchler Presentation

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Dr. Tilman Küchler, CHE, Center for Higher Education Development, Bertelsmann Foundation, Germany

Let me point out, from a Continental European or maybe even German perspective, some directions for future research – for future policy research for a university system in transition. And, from the outset, let me add that I do think future research in the area of media and technology in higher education needs to be carried out in an international as well as comparative perspective.

What do I mean by "a university system in transition"? It is a system that is:

• experiencing de-regulation, i.e., a re-definition of the relationship between the universities and the state governments;
• moving from collegial forms of decision-making to a professional model of university management;
• moving toward lump-sum budgeting of universities, i.e., toward a higher degree of fiscal autonomy;
• a system where competition and differentiation are increasing, and where strategic planning and profile-building become more important as the governmental role in defining the institutional mission decreases.

Some of these changes are rather dramatic with regard to the organizational forms and structures of our universities. And yet, they lay the groundwork and offer a wide range of opportunities for a sustainable media development.

This is what I would like to focus on: the sustainability of innovations in the field of media-based and technology-driven education.  Now, in past years media and technology in university teaching have mainly been discussed from a perspective that attributes to new media the role of a catalyst for university reform in the above-mentioned sense; new media is considered the engine, the enabler, the facilitator of a modernization of higher education institutions as well as the higher education system as a whole.

This view is far from incorrect. There can be no doubt about the innovative potential of new media with regard to the organizational forms and institutional structures of a university – but also with regard to contents and their mode of delivery. And yet it has become increasingly clear that the potential, inherent in new media, for structural reforms cannot be fully utilized within institutions devoid of adequate steering capacity and with only rudimentary management power. We also need institutions that are able to take on responsibility, to act independently, and to decide about their own course of action. In other words, although new media’s potential to foster institutional change is beyond any doubt, technological innovation and innovation by technological means as yet lack the sustainability we need in order to make full use of new media with regard to the overall concern -- to prepare universities for the (not merely technological) challenges of the 21st century.

Let me say a few words about this lack of sustainability of technological innovation. The use of media for instructional purposes is hardly ever part of an institution’s goals and mission. Only in rare cases is it integrated in a process of strategic planning and priority-setting. And the link, so important for a sustainable media development, still needs to be developed between media projects, i.e., innovation, on the one hand, and on the other internal modes of allocating funds according to institutional priorities. Media projects, for the most part, are still in a stage in which they are funded according to the modes and criteria of research funding, i.e., on the basis of third party (research) grants without much institutional back-up and without the necessary ties to an overall institutional policy.

As a result, media initiatives in general are research driven – but they lack an institutional and/or organizational focus. They are funded like research projects, i.e., for a limited period of time only and with the support of external funds – and they are terminated as soon as the pre-defined funding period has elapsed. As a result, there are quite a few – and excellent – prototypes still without a significant and sustainable impact, for instance on curricular structures and regular teaching activities.

Hence, in order to secure the sustainability of innovations in the field of media and technology, it seems that we need to shift the emphasis

• from idiosyncratic approaches and solutions to institutional as well as inter-institutional technological standards, norms, and forms of cooperation (and here the alternatives "make or buy" with regard to platforms, software, and tools is a very pertinent one);
• from tackling media-related issues and problems individually to linking technological innovations to an overall institutional strategy;
• from a bottom-up orientation of media development, driven by individual research interests, to a process of organizational reform and institutional planning initiated and supported top-down;
• from project-based, research-oriented forms of "doing new media" to integrating media development into broader institutional, infrastructural contexts and professional forms of support (support for faculty and staff among other things);
• from technology-driven initiatives to the use of technology based on comprehensive pedagogical concepts.

In short: we need to re-invent the university – in terms of its organization, its structure, its management, etc. – for sustainable technological change.

So we might have to find answers to some of the following questions:

• What are the prerequisites for successful and sustainable technological innovations?
• Which organizational forms, on the institutional level, are suitable to support the effective use of technology-based instruction in higher education?
• What is needed to make them endure?
• What are the essentials of a successful "change management" with regard to promoting media on a broad institutional scale?
• What are the strategic options for a university to engage in media-based and technology-driven education? And what are the economic implications of these options (i.e., where are the future markets?)
• To what extent do institutions relying on technology for instructional purposes have to reconsider and change their traditional institutional goals and mission?

These are some rather difficult questions, and there are no easy answers to them. But we do have to tackle the issues they touch upon in order to secure a sustainable media development in our universities. And we, that is the CHE, the Center for Higher Education Development at the Bertelsmann Foundation (http://www.che.de), the "Virtual University Baden-Württemberg"-Program (http://virtuelle-hochschule.de/hochschule/english.html), and the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (http://www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/) will continue to discuss these questions in the context of an international conference:

Innovation and Sustainability:
Re-inventing the University for Technological Change

Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, http://www.zkm.de)

Karlsruhe, Germany,
October 17th and 18th 2000.

And the main question we will be discussing is: how to balance the tension between innovation on the one hand and sustainability on the other.