All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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sense, online learning itself is no longer
an attractive niche either. There are giant
companies like Blackboard providing
learning management systems for large
numbers of schools serving all sorts of
students, and the processes for offering
online learning in this way are quite well
developed, routine and affordable. If many
schools are doing this right now, is there
really anything innovative about Empire
State College doing it No, because we
are simply sustaining what already exists.
The key to success, then, would be to
identify “new” groups of nontraditional
students unlike the students other schools
are recruiting, or just like those students
but finding new ways to serve them. For
example, one could look at international
students who want American-style
educations but are not living in places
with significant competition. The college
could leverage its skills providing online
and blended models to these “less
attractive” markets through a new unit
devoted to trying new tools for teaching
or ways of teaching.
There are large populations of immigrants,
many or most not native speakers of
English: they need help succeeding in college
and could become a large market over time.
A program that developed enhanced literacy
skills in English or provided non-English
language education as a prerequisite or a
co-requisite along with college-level learning
might open up new educational possibilities
for an institution that wanted to develop the
resources, the structures and the processes
relevant to that new student body.
Educational technology used in new
and different ways might work well.
Smart phones are one arena for growth
possibilities, but they may not be the only
one. I have no doubt that other technologies
or ways to use these new “learning
platforms” will develop quickly.
As I pointed out earlier, throughout their
work, Christensen and his co-authors
observe that the “profit margins” here may
be smaller than in the “upmarket” services,
but they can grow to be very large over
time. They also point out that there is no
incentive to try these new approaches on
the part of senior management (or members
of the organization) devoted to sustaining
existing services. But, a group of faculty and
staff who could think creatively about these
opportunities, in an autonomous unit with
a different organizational design, could well
balance its budget quickly and grow fast
enough down the road to create a thriving
new niche that would serve the college well
in the coming decades.
Interestingly, from Christensen’s point of
view, these new tools and approaches do
not need to be as good as the existing ones;
and, they do not need to succeed all the
time. They only have to be good enough and
offer something new to people who are not
using the services now. However – and this
is a crucial point for us – from a Christensen
point of view, they cannot be integrated into
the existing organizational culture; in such a
context, evidence suggests they will fail.
In one sense, students are not like
transistors, but Christensen and his
co-authors do note that the same
organizational and market imperatives do
exist across a wide range of products and
services. Empire State College has benefited
from disruption in the past and has led a
lot of it. But, yesterday’s disruptions are
today’s sustaining approaches. Today’s and
tomorrow’s disruptions mean growth and
success in the future. The organizational
questions at Empire State College and at
other schools are these: What is the new
disruption How could/would/should we
organize to create disruptions – whether
of structure, of technology or of values, or
respond to disruptions when they occur
I intend this essay to begin a discussion
about directions. I fully expect that many
readers will disagree vigorously with
some of my assumptions and many of my
conclusions, or with the premises upon
which Christensen has built his argument.
Still, I trust that, in a spirit of open debate
(in the spirit of disruption!), our colleagues’
observations and analyses will help spur the
college to be even more successful in the
future than it has been in the past.
Notes
1
The author used Kindle format versions
of Christensen’s work. As such,
citations refer to the locations in the
Kindle version.
2
I can attest from personal experience
to the risks organizational culture can
create in this context. For 16 years,
I taught and mentored in a program
similar to Empire State College,
Skidmore College’s University Without
Walls (UWW). Although my former
program was located in a separate unit
at its college, it was frequently starved
for resources by the larger organization,
was constantly seen as an outlier in the
organizational culture, and eventually
was killed off by the administration.
UWW officially closed its doors in
May 2011.
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011