Digital Universities US Conference Report

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This week, I attended the Inside Higher Ed & Times Higher Education Digital Universities US conference in my hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a relatively intimate event with about 150 attendees. That smaller scale had distinct advantages, most notably, the (ironically) greater opportunity to meet and interact with more people. But beyond the networking, I found the conference thought-provoking and well worth my time for several reasons, two of which I want to highlight here.

Grappling with technology, politics, and higher education

One of the most striking aspects of the conference for me was how openly speakers and participants discussed the impact of recent political changes in the US, and how they got deeper into the forces affecting how generative AI is affecting higher education.

This willingness to engage with current political challenges stood in sharp contrast to other conferences I’ve attended recently, such as ASU+GSV and AACRAO, where the overall mood, at least in most sessions, seemed to be one of denial. At ASU+GSV, for example, these issues came up in isolated sessions or in the odd hallway conversation, but for the most part, they went unmentioned.

In contrast, at this week’s meeting, political and cultural changes were clearly top of mind for many attendees. So too were concerns about generative AI. Thankfully, the conversations moved beyond the usual hand-wringing about cheating and instead focused on AI’s broader implications for teaching and learning, employment, and campus privacy and security.

But the challenges raised by political pressures and generative AI seem to be surfacing deeper tensions within higher education, tensions we’re now being forced to confront. While many of these came up, I’ll focus on just a couple here.

Even when the conversation did turn to academic integrity, the debate was less about cheating itself and more about how AI has laid bare our lack of clarity around what we’re actually assessing in higher education. Factual recall, the ability to apply knowledge in new contexts, the creation of new knowledge? Not only are our goals unclear, but our assessment methods are often poorly aligned with those goals. Too often, assessment feels disconnected from the process of learning and knowledge transfer, more like busywork than meaningful evaluation.

Additionally, there was discussion about how the current anxiety around the rise in cheating may say something about students’ confidence, their belief in the value of their course or program, and their perception of instructor presence and engagement in the classroom.

Another major tension that surfaced was around the role of higher education in skills development. What exactly do we mean by “skills”? Should universities even be in the skills business? Are skills only taught through training, or do they also fall within the domain of education? To me, the answers to the latter two questions are obvious, but clearly, that’s not a universally held view. These tensions and misunderstandings were exposed, and if we’re going to make progress as a sector, we’ll need to grapple with them.

Unsurprisingly, while the conference did a good job of surfacing these challenges, it didn’t produce many conclusions. What we heard, mostly, was concern. As one attendee said to me, “the university administrators are not OK.”

And perhaps, as one panelist in a session on privacy, security, and AI observed, we’re collectively moving through the stages of grief on these issues. Having passed denial, we’re now firmly in the pain stage. Anger and bargaining may be next.

A focus on online learning

Another notable aspect of the conference was the strong focus on online learning and the richness of content around it. This was a welcome addition, and I encourage IHE / THE to keep online learning as a central focus of future events. High-quality discussion of fully online education outside of specialized conferences is sorely needed—especially as online learning becomes a more integral part of college and university strategy.

I gave a presentation on the future of online learning (slides shared below), but two of the best sessions on the topic for me were Stephanie Moore’s conversation with Colleen Flaherty on re-imagining remote courses and Willem Boom’s session on optimizing for excellence.

Colleen’s skilled and incisive questioning gave Stephanie the opportunity to deliver some real truth bombs about how we approach online learning. Stephanie emphasized that we need to move beyond the technology itself and recognize that online learning is simply a modality. Like any other technology, print, for example, it has its champions and critics, but ultimately, what matters is the design. A course can be well-designed or poorly designed. Technology offers certain affordances, but it’s far from determinative.

I have to admit, when Stephanie brought up Plato and how his critique of writing mirrors today’s discourse around AI, arguing that it erodes student learning through cognitive offloading, I got so excited I started clapping. Slightly embarrassing, but at least it stopped me from yelling “Amen, sister!” from the back of the room, which was my initial impulse.

In my own session on the future of online learning, I avoided any attempts at grand futurism and instead argued that we need to understand the vectors of change to get a clearer sense of where online learning is headed. In the short time I had, I covered six of these vectors, framed as questions:

• Will the current growth trajectory of online learning continue—and if so, when will it level off?

• Will market concentration in online learning increase or decrease?

• Will the student audience for online learning become more internationalized?

• Why should we be taking student success in online learning far more seriously?

• What can be done about the rising marketing costs for online programs?

• Has the regulatory threat to online learning subsided, or intensified?

Most of my presentation focused on online learning in the US, but I also included comparative data from the UK, thanks to Neil Mosley. Neil also got a well-deserved shout out from Willem Boom during his session.

Parting thoughts

Amid all the thought-provoking and high-quality content, there were a few head-scratching sessions, particularly the opening and closing panels. In the opening session, the speaker tried to address the implications of Trump 2.0 and technology without directly referencing recent events, which left the discussion feeling oddly disconnected. The closing panel featured so many ideas from left field that it felt like the speaker was playing an entirely different game than the one we’re facing as a sector.

That said, the conference overall was both enjoyable and rewarding, and I’m already looking forward to next year.

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