I’d like to heartily second Michael’s comments. We now have several large and well-respected US institutions targeting what we typically thought of as our local” market specifically in BC. We need to be competitive.
Lyn Bartram
Professor | School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Director | Vancouver Institute of Visual Analytics
Simon Fraser University | Surrey
250, 13450 102 Ave., Surrey, B.C. V3T 0A3
T: 778.782.7439 | M: 604.908.9954 | www.sfu.ca/~lyn
From: Michael Filimowicz <michael_f@sfu.ca>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 9:40 AM
To: "academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: addressing the unemployment problem
I think it's important to look beyond our own needs to consider those of the wider society. Millions of jobs lost, which even if the pandemic ended tomorrow, many won't be coming
back. The university, as a core institution of civilization, has a special obligation to do what it can to help those suddenly economically dislocated to gain a foothold in the economy.
While many in the academy are not thrilled with online learning (it seems no number of decades of research can counter general perceptions based on Medieval traditions), there's
really no other way to educate at scale than online delivery methods. Society is going to have a major education-at-scale problem (actually, it has already had this problem for many years, given the millions of annually vacant technology jobs,
which the 'bootcamp' industry has addressed– now this education-at-scale problem has become much worse).
South of the border, University of Washington invested years ago in infrastructure to educate millions of students online, and its
Continuum College annually awards 50,000 + certificates and degrees. A forward-thinking approach to address vast society unemployment would be to consider ideas that often seem to be anathema to the general local discourse, such as awarding university credit
to students who complete courses on the MOOC platforms, which many other universities (and, very high quality ones, too), have pursued:
https://www.classcentral.com/report/moocs-for-credit/
Best,
Michael Filimowicz, PhD
Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
School of Interactive Arts and Technology | Simon Fraser University
Office: SUR 2818
| 250-13450 102 Ave. Surrey, BC V3T 0A3
T: 778-782-8178
| Skype ID: michael.filimowicz