Adopting Disruptive Technologies in Traditional Universities: Continuing Education as an Incubator for Innovation

Abstract

A recent book by Clayton M. Christensen, Associate Professor of Business at Harvard University, discusses the sometimes devastating impact in the corporate environment of what he refers to as "disruptive technologies." Successful, well-managed firms that dominate their markets have sometimes gone into a sharp decline or even collapsed when a new technology disrupts the pattern of their market segment. Other firms, however, have handled such transitions smoothly, maintaining their position of dominance in the market by employing specific techniques to integrate the new and disruptive technology into their operations.Traditional research universities enjoy a dominant position in the higher education "market," but they are beginning to feel the impact of disruptive technologies such as distance education. They may benefit not only from an examination of the insights that Christensen has derived from his study of the impact of disruptive technologies in the corporate environment but also from a selective application of the techniques for coping with disruptive technologies that Christensen has found to be effective in the business world. Some of these techniques imply an important role for continuing education units as semi-autonomous incubators of disruptive innovation.

Manpower Development in the Context of Linear & Non-Linear Dynamic Environment in Arab Countries

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Degrees of Change: Understanding Academics Experiences with a Shift to Flexible Technology-Enhanced Learning in Initial Teacher Education

“…Fourth, following the commitment to offer a flexible, technology enhanced distance education version of the program, the potential for 'disruption' described above (Archer et al, 1999;Garrison et al, 2003) and the 'transformative potential' of TEL (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004) were seen by school leadership as potentially beneficial mechanisms to further an existing change agenda within the school. The curriculum development process was seen as an ideal opportunity to a) update academic practices within the program as part of staff capacity building for TEL, b) establish new ways of working drawn from best practice in distance and online education to support the success of the newly developed program, and c) establish systematic approaches to design, development and teaching.…”

From OER to MOO Cs: Critical perspectives on the historical mediation trajectories of open education

“…During the 1980s and 1990s, approaches to distance learning began to be accompanied by a techno-economic rationality promoting industrialized production of pedagogical outputs and internationalization in order to provide additional revenue streams for, often, publically funded education systems, as demonstrated by the standardization of practices and the sourcing of additional channels for educational programming and media (see Weinbren 2012;Archer et al 1999;Davies et al 2006).…”