Accreditation and competency are key issues that the open education movement has to satisfactorily address. There appear to be three categories of learners that have different needs, options and values when it comes to accreditation. The first group is comprised of students, primarily in the developed world, that take courses as part of an approved degree program at an accredited institution. The second group consists of learners that actively educate themselves, but do not necessarily need the courses to be accredited. The third group is comprised of learners that would like to take accredited courses, but simply do not have the means or ability to take courses from an accredited institution.

The first group of learners who have the means and the opportunity to take accredited courses will continue to do so. These individuals take courses to complete a degree, which in turn has the promise of gaining them entry into a profession of their choice. This traditional model works well and there is no reason that it cannot continue to work well. Universities, accrediting bodies, governments, and most professions are all wedded to this model.

The second set of learners are not as concerned about accreditation. They may already have a degree or a good job and are therefore not as concerned with accreditation. Or, they may not have a degree, but are simply not interested in engaging in a full degree program. The credibility of the source of their courses is important to them, but it does not necessarily have to be regulated by a regional accrediting body. Broadly, several groups of learners fall into this category: students taking extra courses, lifelong learners, test-prep students, continuing education students, and life skill learners. These individuals take courses for a variety of reasons: to learn a new skill, keep their brain young, gain CEUs etc.

The third group of learners consists of individuals who would like access to accredited courses, but simply do not have the means or ability to enroll in these institutions (Jarvis, 2007, Suarez-Orozco, 2007). Some of these individuals have financial struggles; others live in late-developing countries that do not have accrediting bodies or a robust educational infrastructure. The need and the desire is present, but the opportunity is lacking.

Accreditation is not an issue for individuals in the first group. Learners in the second group could benefit from some external source of regulation, but it does not have to be a formal accrediting body. The third group would like an accredited education, but simply have too many obstacles impeding them from reaching this goal. For the second and third groups, there has to be an alternative way of recognizing a person’s educational accomplishments outside of an accredited degree program. Sometimes independent (non-accredited) institutions offer a certificate. Another model might be drawn from skills based fields that do not require a formal degree. For example, many computer programmers, or hackers, do not have a degree in computer science. They are instead hired on a basis of their previous work (portfolio) and references from others. The same can be said for an artist or carpenter.

George Siemens (2008) addresses this issue head-on and suggests that the future of education and accreditation could be managed through a reputation system. The reputation system would function like eBay where other people would rate the individual. Recognized experts in an area would have more clout when rating others than people not recognized in that area. For instance, if a person was studying anthropology, then an expert in anthropology’s rating would have more power than another person who knows a lot about electrical engineering, but little about anthropology. These references and accomplishments would then be tracked in the person’s ePortfolio.

It is very unlikely that the traditional accreditation approach will ever be completely replaced. However, it is likely that a parallel, disruptive, reputation system could take root and provide a service where the current accreditation system cannot. Clay Christensen (1997) describes how a new disruptive product or service eventually unseats an old service or product by offering a simple and affordable alternative to the older established product. The disruptive service gains a foothold by providing a service to people that are currently overlooked or underserved by the primary competitor. Another way of saying this is that the disruptive service competes with non-competition.

There is a phenomenal new book out that brilliantly captures how the Web will reshape education in the next 6 years. Christensen, Horn, and Johnson outline how “computer-based learning” provides several advantages over learning in a physical classroom. These advantages include: increased curriculum (more AP classes, broader spectrum of courses), greater ability to tailor learning to the individual student, increased access for students (eg., rural areas, overseas), and dramatically decreased costs.

They define, “Disruptive innovations tend to be simpler and more affordable than existing products. This allows them to take root in simple, undemanding applications within a new market or arena of competition.” Another key component of a disruptive innovation is that it provides a product or service to people that currently do not have access to a product or service (eg., homeschoolers, lifelong learners).

These guys are no slouches. They are some of the brightest minds applying the innovation model to the educational sphere. Straight out of Harvard, they have provided significant innosight into how we can collaborate and solve the educational crisis we currently face.

You can read Terry Anderson’s summary here and an overview article here.

On a personal note, this book is particularly comforting to me because it captures much of what our team has been working on for the last year and a half. One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is that there isn’t much external validation pre-launch. This book provides a bit of encouragement that we are indeed on the right track.

Stephen Downes, Martin Weller, Tony Hirst, and Gary Lewis have all been having an intriguing discussion on the business of education. Martin started it off with a great post proposing different business models (advertising, affiliates, sponsorships etc.) to support free eLearning. Stephen responded by suggesting that eLearning should be free and should not be monetized. Gary Lewis summarized things and asked them both to add more detail. I’m jumping in now because we have been struggling with this very issue for the last year.

We finally decided that you need multiple streams of revenue to be able to support a system that can ultimately empower education for everyone. The overhead is just to high to be able to do it for free without advertising or some other type of monetizing strategy. Many people don’t realize it, but running a web-based business is pretty expensive, especially if that business scales so that even a fraction of the people on the planet utilize it. Moore’s law does help with storage costs, but, still, in an increasingly video intensive context, storage and bandwidth costs are very, very, high. Additionally, if you want to provide a service that is reliable and one that educators and academic institutions feel comfortable using, then you have to make sure you can offer a decent SLA (guaranteed 99% uptime etc.). That means you have to have reliable datacenters, co-location, and people on hand to help if the site goes down or gets hacked (eg., slideshare.com with its recent bouts of denial of service attacks). These are just the basic costs and don’t even begin to cover design and engineering costs, particularly if you want to do something really innovative.

So, I guess I’m adding my thoughts to the mix. I’d love to see a platform that provided free education for all, but I just don’t see how it can happen without advertising or other revenue generating strategies. I’m with Martin in that I “don’t have the imagination” to visualize it occurring. The overhead is just too high.

That said, monetizing strategies are not inherently bad. There is much good that occurs through business processes. Paul Graham has a phenomenal video here where he talks about the brilliance of being a benevolent business. He uses several illustrations, but perhaps the most poignant is his Google example. He rhetorically asks something like, “Would Google be as good as it is if it were a ministry or non-profit?” The answer is no. It wouldn’t be such a great resource if it were a non-profit. So, even though Google is a business that uses advertising as its sole monetizing strategy, it provides an amazing amount of value to people everyday. It uses that revenue to provide new services that really help people (think Gmail). I, for one, am happy to use Google’s services and I don’t mind the advertising in the least, because I see it in the larger context. They are providing great tools for me for free. Graham’s hypothesis is that this model is ideal for both users and companies. It is a true win/win. We certainly think so.