Dr. Keith Hampson
Director, Digital Education StrategiesRyerson University
Toronto, Canada
Keith Hampson is Director, Digital Education Strategies at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Prior to entering university management, he was a member of the University Faculty, where he lectured on contemporary media and consumer culture. He has a number of publication credits; most recently as the coauthor of Mastering Digital Research: A Guide for Students (2009). He is founder of LinkedIn’s “Higher Education Management Group” with close to six thousand members.
Dr. Hampson is an experienced higher education consultant who has worked with companies such as Flat World Knowledge, Eduventures, Pearson Education, WebCT, Ninthhouse Communications, Digital Learning Interactive, Nelson Education, The McGraw- Hill Companies, Convergence Management Consultants, Canadian International Development Agency, NEXTMove Communications and has served on the advisory boards of Flat World Knowledge Inc., GradeGuru, and EdTek Services Inc.
He is a regular speaker at higher education conferences on topics including content development models, productivity strategies and competition between institutions. Keith earned his doctorate from the University of Queensland (Australia).
RC: You founded one of the most popular blogs on higher education--Higher Education Management Group. Please share how you thought about starting it and what are some of its success factors?
KH: The blog and the associated LinkedIn group grew out of recognition that the changes that need to be made in higher education need leadership. Our poor track record at innovation in higher education should have taught us by now that isolated efforts by lone faculty members are rarely sustainable, and because of the highly segmented quality of our organizations, poorly communicated (and thus, disseminated). Substantive change requires thoughtful planning, organization-wide coordination to be realized.
It’s also important to remember that for most faculty – given the design of their jobs, the ways in which they are rewarded, and so forth – there is little incentive for them to dedicate their time to institutional change. Rewards for faculty are primarily a result of research productivity, and most of the issues we are facing – particularly with respect to online education – concern teaching. Despite the rhetoric of academic leadership, rewards for excellence in teaching appear to be declining; I don’t see this trend reversing anytime soon given the state of the economy and the fundamental role of university research in driving prosperity.
Any success the blog might have had is due to a few factors. Unlike most blogs, this one is connected to an existing group – the Higher Education Management Group within Linked In. In addition to acting as a channel for readers, this lends the blog a greater sense of community than most. Secondly, I try to keep the focus of the blog narrow. The properties of the Internet and of improved search capabilities, is encouraging all content providers to specialize. It is simply easier for readers to use your content efficiently if they know, roughly, what they will get from it. This doesn’t mean that the readers won’t be occasionally surprised by what they find, but it does mean that the surprises will concern a relatively narrow range of topics.
I also think the blog is serving an unmet market of readers. There is very little written about the “business of higher education”. At the same time, this is an increasingly important aspect of higher education.
RC: What are the top two trends you are witnessing in online higher education? What opportunities and challenges do you see in offering online courses to international students (for example, a US university offering online course in India)?
KH: Because the area of international online higher education is relatively new, and the issues so unfamiliar to most, it is difficult to write a brief response to this question.
Nevertheless . . . I’ll start by stating that I’m not optimistic about the current ability of most traditional colleges/universities to successfully offer online programs to non-domestic students. This is not because of a lack of demand, which I think will emerge, or even because of the lack of stable, affordable technology in the source country (e.g. bandwidth in India). Rather, it is because administrators and academics in traditional colleges and universities tend to underestimate the range of skills and processes required to establish, build and manage these international ventures. When online learning first took hold in universities, many leaders got very excited about the idea of creating a “borderless” campus. You can imagine how appealing this vision might have been. But at that time, few people had actually thought-through what would be involved in successfully realizing this vision, such as international marketing, processes for maintaining control over the student experience, intellectual property implications, student language and writing skills, or even operating costs (few schools know the real costs of their domestic online learning operations).
So, in answer to your question, I think we will see schools interested in international online learning ventures come to recognize that there is more to this than they realized. And they will (should?) do one of two things: one, identify which parts of the venture they can do on their own (for which they are well suited), and which they are less well suited for. With this insight in-hand, they can then more thoughtfully define their plans. One form I’d like this to take is a move away from internationalizing their programs, to acting as consultants for universities in other countries to help them develop their capacity to establish and grow their own online ed operations. This means getting away from the notion of simply expanding the reach of the school (in geographic terms), to working with client-institutions in other nations to help them avoid the common and predictable pitfalls. I also think this will encourage a more collaborative approach, that minimizes the tendency of Western institutions to believe they know what is best for the client-nation. Similarly, I expect to see new kinds of full-service consultancies emerge that help Western institutions expand their programs internationally.
RC: Please share some of the highlights of your work as the Director of Education Strategies at Ryerson University.
KH: I left a faculty position to go into university management because I knew that digital was going to be brilliant (eventually) and in order to have an impact in this new area of education, I would need to learn about the business side of operations. Being a mere subject matter expert is an increasingly tenuous position; you need to know how to get things done.So, the “highlights” of this experience revolve, primarily, around what I’ve learnt about how great projects are realized. Here are a few:
1. High quality professionals are priceless. Do whatever you can to keep them happy (and on your team).
2. Don’t let your ego make your decisions.
3. Passion trumps intellect 9 out of 10 times. If you care about a subject and let it show, people will want to help.
4. Go around people that want to stop you. They’ll soon find someone else to bother.
5. Figure out what matters to people, then help them get it.
6. Shut up and listen.
7. You’ll get more out of an hour talking to bright, experienced and generous people than 100 hours with a committee. Or 200.
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