The Integrated Campus: Observations from the US and Canada About MOOCs' Impact on Physical Campus

The business models, pedagogies and infrastructure that have served universities well in the past are under threat. In 2013 incremental improvement may not be enough. Universities visited on the study tour acknowledged that the higher demands on universities – coupled with the threat / opportunity posed by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – is forcing a re-think of some of the fundamental tenets of university operations. It is causing them to ask questions such as: 
How to increase throughput / drive efficiencies as traditional revenue sources dry up? 
How does a university differentiate if it is not on content? 
Where will future demand come from when being `local’ is no longer a major competitive advantage? 

The 2013 US/Canada Higher Education Study tour sought to explore these issues in greater detail, and investigate potential responses. 

Before considering how universities are changing, it is necessary to understand why. Universities visited as part of the study tour had remarkably similar observations about the demands being placed on them. Most crucial is the changing expectations of the learners, who are not only more demanding, but also more capable of exercising choice. Learner demand are increasing on a range of fronts, including an expectation that universities will equip them for work not just equip them to think. Learner demands are being fed at least in part by consumer technologies, which are creating expectations that learners be able to learn in a manner, time and place that suits them and to have almost infinite choice of subjects. 

Industry is also more demanding, driven by the pressures it is being put under by its own customers. In the quest for efficiency and to increase speed to market, industry requires `job ready’ graduates that can be immediately productive. 

The wider community is also more demanding, with universities expected to be accessible to all as part of a move towards `mass education’. This insists that universities enable participation of the most disadvantaged in society. 

It is perhaps ironic that the focus on MOOCs has focused attention back on the role of the physical campus. For example, it is creating pressure on universities to create more collaborative learning spaces on campus and to exploit new technologies such as video that make the learning experience more engaging. 

MOOCs are also being used to augment traditional courses, and are considered highly effective in a flipped learning context where students can absorb content in an interactive way outside of the `class’ environment. It was reported that at SJSU early trials of MOOCs had led to a spike in attendance on campus, creating additional pressure on the physical campus infrastructure.