Beyond dead trees and defining the university 'experience'

The evolution of the Internet has had dramatic impacts on the world of media and publishing, with publishers now fighting to maintain revenues when everyone expects to get content free online. Chris Ashford considers what the implications of new Internet technologies are for universities, and if law teachers can learn from the problems faced in the music and publishing industries.

Chris Ashford is a principal lecturer in the Department of Law at the University of Sunderland.

Newspaper sales, we are told, are falling. Publishers tell us that a similar trend appears to be happening in the publishing world with fewer students purchasing texts. As a result, both our newspapers and academic publishers have been forced to re-evaluate their business models. In the wake of the emergence of the online newspaper alternative, Rupert Murdoch has begun experimenting with charging for content access with both the Wall Street Journal and The Times. Time will tell whether these new forms of charging will work, but similar attempts to make the New York Times available through online ‘pay-to-access’ have thus far failed (although the Times’ recent inclusion in Apple’s iPad launch suggests they might have found one way).

Alongside this trend in newspapers, academic publishers increasingly are developing their online content. Media rich environments of video, audio and graphical content are ever more common whilst the provision of online updates extend both the life span and competitiveness of existing textbook editions. For the newspaper and wider publishing industry, they have evolved from the providers of information printed on dead trees to purveyors of knowledge and an academic ‘experience’. This shift is a response to the increasing demand for flexibility in accessing products and services. These developments also offer the potential for a blurring of the lines between academic publishing house, the individual academic and the university as each finds itself pursuing a similar agenda.

As academics, we are also facing a change in the demand for our services. Web 2.0 and the social networking revolution have changed the way many of us communicate with one another and with our students. Facebook and Twitter have become tools for students, recruiters, alumni groups and to a lesser extent, faculty groups to support interaction. ‘Spin off’ sites such as Academia.edu have acted as an academic networking platform whilst other sites such as LinkedIn provide a commercial networking space.

Skype, MSN, Google Chat and education software specialist providers such as WIMBA provide communication via video whilst other software such as Audioboo and ipadio form the latest wave in ‘phlogging’ or audio blogging via a telephone. Other programmes such as Ustream live streaming of video and storage similar to YouTube, whilst EchoSystem a lecture capture and delivery service.

All of these technologies are akin to the first newspaper websites or the early online content repositories for publishers. They provide new and flexible ways for students to access ‘content’. As law teachers, our teaching might be viewed as the traditional medium for providing that content. This is still largely delivered via lectures, seminars, tutorials and workshops but increasingly involves a form of e-learning; an approach we’ve come to term ‘blended’. Yet, if we provide lectures via podcasts, would students still choose to physically attend those lectures? For most lecturers, such a question has probably occurred to them and for some, this has forced a market response of re-invigorating the lecture experience. For others, this has perhaps manifested itself as a fear of embracing such technologies.

Rather like the ‘live gig’, it is the provision of an ‘experience’ that students actively desire rather than a fixed medium. If the live experience can be replicated on a CD or a podcast, the music lover/student will embrace the alternative but where a memorable live experience can be provided, that live version will continue to be embraced.

The newspaper, publishing and music worlds offer us a glimpse into our possible future. Those enterprises discovered, in some cases too late, that they had to adapt or die. They recognise that their ‘customers’ desire to access them differently and increasingly view information as a ‘free’ commodity.

Just as the newspapers began to provide their previously commercial services for free in a bid to boost ‘brand awareness’ and increase the impact of journalists, the world of academia has sought to increasingly provide information for free.

Lectures and materials that would otherwise be provided on the payment of tuition fees are increasingly available though iTunes U. A quick search of law related material will reveal that Yale and the Open University appear to be leading this area of development. The service provides a series of lectures for free. At the time of writing, the top five downloads from this section of the iTunes store were: Introduction to comics by Jim Davis, Introduction to Mac OS x and Cocoa Touch, A romp through the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the present day, Twilight and the Beginners’ French introduction.

These podcasts have become increasingly popular enabling universal access to knowledge. It has the potential to radicalise the relationship between university and wider community and rip down the walls of the academy.

Over time, there may come growing pressures to monetise these new forms of distributing knowledge, or perhaps more likely, the student/tutor relationship further evolves with the university seen as increasingly providing the assessment and qualification rather than necessarily the educational content. In truth, we simply don’t know.

Yet, the evolving method of consuming newspapers, publishing and music should give academics pause for thought. Just as the media have had to consider the question “what are we for?”, so universities should ask tough questions about what they are for, and then crucially, how best to deliver that product, service, or I would suggest, ‘experience’. Quite simply, what are students paying ever increasing amounts of money to universities for?

Last Modified: 9 June 2010