Looking Back and Looking Forward: The Promise of Simple Becomes Complex

(Looking Back and Looking Forward takes a look at the articles and posts I found interesting from the previous week, along with reflections about how the trends they point to might shape my thinking about education and technology.)

To be clear, I don’t really want to talk about the metaverse but, since this is a weekly roundup of the latest articles and posts I’ve collected, I’m pretty much obligated to go where the flow takes me.

And it’s hard to ignore headlines like “10 Institutions Opening ‘Metaversity’ Campuses,” or “Metaverse and Education: What Do We Need to Know?” Which is a good question. At this early stage in the hype cycle, what do we need to know? For starters, it might be helpful to read this post about what people really “own” when they purchase things in the metaverse. Or, it might be worth the time to consider the real costs of embracing VR and the metaverse as teaching and learning technology. You might also enjoy Dave Winer’s brief post on remembrance of simulations past.

Another mainstream-education crossover topic was also big in the past week’s news: subscriptions (in particular, related to streaming media). In case you missed it, Netflix announced that it would be introducing new, lower-cost streaming packages that included advertising. The move, along with news of declining growth and a loss of subscribers to competitors caused the company’s stock to drop 37%. But Netflix wasn’t the only streaming media provider to disappoint. After acquiring CNN and closely evaluating the just-launched CNN+ service, Warner Brothers opted to pull the plug.

What’s happening in streaming media? In spite of the great original programming offered by different services — Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon, HBO, Disney, etc. — the cost of multiple subscriptions, along with separate access is proving to be too costly and way too complex for many users. Cable anyone?

For those of you keeping track of the educational content game at home, this is a major challenge for that industry as well. More and more providers offer or are preparing to offer subscription models (for example, here and here). But do they make sense in an ecosystem where we have yet to realize the dream of creating dedicated, loyal lifelong learners? Right now, it feels like we’re just making things more complex.

One of the original (or illusional/delusional) promises of subscriptions was that they would save us money and allow us to get only the programming we really needed. But what to do when things get more complex and we’re still paying too much? In the education world, one answer has been to switch to open educational resources (OER) for course materials and, in some cases, full courses. This past week we had positive OER news regarding their effectiveness in addressing the high cost of course materials, as well as a new report on OER’s potential impact on teaching and equity. The report, created by SRI Education, a division of the nonprofit research institute SRI International, also points to the need for greater institutional support for OER and their development and integration.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Phil Hill’s post, “Let’s Not Romanticize 2019 for Online Learning.” This is an overview of his OLC Innovate 2022 fireside chat with Joe Moreau, Vice-Chancellor Technology for Foothill-DeAnza Community College District. This discussion (video included) addresses the lessons learned from the massive pivot to online learning during the pandemic and how we can apply those lessons to future developments in online learning.

Looking Back and Looking Forward: The Promise of Simple Becomes Complex

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