A Cohesive Institutional System Design to Achieve Quality, Consistency, and Affordability in High School and Undergraduate Education
A Short Executive Summary
1. What is Mass Customization of Education, and what does it do?
It is a formal education system, which achieves industrial-scale quality effectiveness, consistency, and cost-efficiency through a systematic use of automation in certain parts of the learning process. It is not an educational theory, but a design for an evolving educational institution to make mass access a reality.
“In the 21st Century, we run an 18th Century education” is an overused rhetoric, which indicates that the fundamental problem of education has been sensed for quite some time but not articulated. The problem is identified and articulated in this book: Currently, classroom operations (that is the core operation of the business) are conducted in pre-Industrial Age “shop-mode.” In shop-mode, the single-handed teacher, repetitiously, determines the content, practices, examinations, manages exams and grading, and guides the learning process -- albeit using the latest modern tools, and some may use assistants.
Presently, the spectrum of institutional models is wide. Some, such as Arizona State University, are more innovative and technologically more dynamic than others. However, they all fall into the present hybrid-shop-mode category. They are large business systems, which support a large number of independently operated hybrid classes. This mode of education suffers from (a) the limits of the ordinary teacher’s knowledge and skills, (b) the limitations of the resources available to the teacher and (c) high costs of the repetitious process – repetitions, not only for the same faculty, but also among faculty in the same campus, and worse, across multiple campus systems such as in state college systems. Moreover, as this book shows, in this mode of operation, corrupting elements easily enter and undermine the learning process, which subverts much of students’ learning potentials and faculty’s resources. At this point, other than time and space flexibility, online education suffers from all the ills of shop mode education plus a significant reduction in dialog and inter-activities among students and faculty.
In this book, a new category of educational institution is proposed: Changing the core of the learning process from the present “hybrid shop mode” to a “hybrid industrial orchestration mode.”
Industrial Age is characterized by “industrial orchestration,” which started in manufacturing but gradually adapted to other industries. In “industrial orchestration,” teams of professionals, with combined resources, and the best of automated tools are orchestrated to produce higher volume, better quality, and more consistent products at lower costs. Compare the quality, consistency, and cost to the consumer, between cars built in one-person shops with cars built in modern auto manufacturing. Likewise, industrial-scale orchestration of a major film studio offers the consumer with high-quality, low-cost products.
While in shop-mode, production and distribution are local, in orchestration, production is centralized, and distribution is localized. True that great new ideas emerge from individuals, but it is industrial orchestration that brings the fruits of those ideas to the masses. Moreover, in industrial orchestration, because of the combined resources in the central unit, innovations, change, and evolutionary updates take place at a much faster pace.
Adopting industrial orchestration to high school and undergraduate education is not immediate. This book elaborates on how to adopt (not to clone) industrial orchestration to education.
For decades, all efforts, including MOOC s, which have been bonanzas for informal education of serious self-learners, have been concentrated on shop-mode course re-design. This book shows that problems of the present formal education are structural at the institutional level. Mass Customization of Education, therefore, is an institution re-design. Comparisons with the present shop-mode are presented throughout the book -- feature-by-feature and summarized in the table at the end of chapter 5.
Part I of this book describes how Mass Customization of Education works, and why it will achieve a superior education. The book also shows how a present institution can transition to this new arrangement and evolve from there. Once built, beyond providing mass-access, it will accommodate a much stronger and more comprehensive curriculum structure, in which content will be evolving efficiently. In this curriculum structure design, described in part II, job-oriented specializations take center stage. However, the material benefits of “whole-person” education with strong “Ethics and Civics Across the Curriculum,” tailored and infused with specialization, are explored.
2. How can students “customize” their education?
Uniqueness of students’ abilities and interests requires options:
(i) a large number of programs from practical to highly theoretical,
(ii) flexibility and fluidity to transfer from one to another option, and
(iii) access to alternative versions of course modules created in alternative learning styles.
The larger these options are, the better the student can find his/her matches. This matchmaking is at the core of the individual motivations and success.
3. Why does Mass Customization of Education apply only to high school and undergraduate levels?
The proposed system is not designed for pre-high school and post-baccalaureate research levels. In pre-high school, the primary aim must be child development. Moreover, at those ages, we cannot put pupils at the center of learning responsibility, facing demanding course work, and exams. In the post-baccalaureate level, the main operation is research, which is not automatable. In high school and undergraduate levels, the subjects are in the domain of “well known and structured knowledge,” which can be computerized. Moreover, at these levels, students are mature enough to be expected to have learning responsibilities through the many automated parts of the system. Still, these levels of education need face-to-face class interactions among students and teachers -- be it in physical or virtual classrooms. Thus, Mass Customization of Education is designed as a hybrid system. In Affiliated Schools, instructors, who are skillful in the latest learning theories and practices, facilitate class interactions, minor research, and keep students on course.
