Unbundling and rebundling education

  by EJP Photo

A popular theme of the last few years has been the unbundling of higher education. This refers to the move from the all-inclusive model where a university offers degree programmes, courses, examination, support, tutoring, guidance etc to the unbundled model where a wide range of different institutions, companies and networks offer different parts of the package and students have the option of customizing their education. This has prompted much discussion on the advent of do-it-yourself education and a new educational ecosystem where the learner is free to choose the learning path that is most suitable. I have often written on this topic here and see many advantages with the unbundling process; enabling greater learner participation, widening access to education, offering more choice and greater flexibility.

Now even the notion of a course is being unbundled, as illustrated in an article by Jeffrey R Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Are Courses Outdated? MIT Considers Offering ‘Modules’ Instead. Noting that MOOCs work best when broken into short modules of 1-2 weeks, MIT are investigating offering a wide range of short modules that can be assembled by students into courses using a similar logic to the playlists we create for our online music. Both online and campus courses could be modularized according to the article and the benefits of this move are summarized as:

• Students could retake any module they have trouble with before moving to the next concept in a sequence.
• A modular approach would make it easier for professors to teach a course together, since faculty members could tackle a section rather than a whole course.
• Updating a module when new information emerges is easier than redesigning an entire course.

Maybe this is not as revolutionary as it seems since a modular courses have been around for a long time. The difference today is the potential option to mix modules from different institutions though that would require the modules to conform to common quality criteria and for learners to be highly skilled in selecting suitable learning paths.

The problem with unbundling is that in the end it simply becomes too confusing to handle and the learner becomes paralyzed in an overwhelming abundance of choice. The pendulum starts then to swing towards rebundling; helping learners to make the right choices and find a path through the educational jungle. When choice becomes too complex we need someone who can help us to choose. This rebundling movement is introduced in an article in the latest edition of eCampus News, Unbundling and re-bundling in higher education.

... too few are thinking about how to help students make sense of and navigate this emerging, unbundled world and integrate the modular pieces together in ways that help them carve out a coherent and sensible life path. This is critical because it appears that in a personalized learning future, every single learner will have a custom fit educational pathway.

The movement could of course go full circle and the university will provide this rebundling but from a very different perspective from today's. Instead of offering everything under the same roof the future university will guide students to find personalised learning paths using courses or modules from a wide variety of sources, internal and external. If there are recognised quality criteria and metadata for all those resources it will be possible to put them together into a coherent path. The university's role will be as a guarantor of quality and provider of qualified tuition, guidance and mentorship.