A “Pixar” Model for the Creation of Educational Materials in a Digital World– Paper

A “Pixar” Model for the Creation of Educational Materials in a Digital World1
Thomas D. Lairson
Gelbman Professor of International Business
Professor of Political Science
Rollins College
Prepared for presentation at the NITLE Symposium: Inventing the Future
Arlington, Virginia – April 16-17, 2012

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
William Gibson

Abstract
Developing innovative digital education materials, incorporating all of the engaging value that
digitization can offer and promoting complex analytical and intellectual sensibilities in students, is
the main barrier to achieving the disruptive innovations many have anticipated from online
education. At the same time, developing these materials is unlikely without significant disruptive
innovation within the content creation value chain. This paper provides a conceptualization of these
changes by developing the “Pixar” model, based on the digital business model of Steve Jobs at Pixar
and Apple. The Pixar model provides the gold standard for successful operation within the world of
digital business and establishes a path for likely change within the arena of digital education,
including for liberal arts colleges.

The Pixar model consists of a willingness to break existing product and business model molds by
using cutting edge digital capabilities, a refusal to be bound by many existing industry standards, an
intersection of content – what Jobs referred to as art - and technology, defining new product
categories and redefining existing product categories, an obsession with quality, defining new
business models by leveraging distributed knowledge creation capabilities, and exploiting the
extremely low marginal cost of a digital product. Liberal arts colleges will need to embark on self-
disruption to adapt to this new world, with Pixar-like thinking relating to entrepreneurship,
reconfiguring incentives, load definitions and skill sets for faculty and technologists alike, integrate
students into the content creation process, embrace a trial and error process of change, engage in
radical experimentation with existing models of time and space for courses to adapt to new digital
educational materials, link into new value chains for digital educational materials, and leverage their
approach to ideas, learning, thinking and education into the digital age.

High quality digital educational materials, some of which already exist, must meet the best standards
of education, by enhancing engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective and values-clarifying,
decision-making, and information-evaluation learning. To do this, such materials must be highly
engaging, visually compelling, interactive over a range and depth of intellectual activities, embed
unobtrusive testing and capture results, with differentiated levels of competence and achievement.
Examples for a “course” on U.S.-China relations could include AI-based interactive 3D virtual
environments with SIRI-like input and response capabilities. These can be built around developing
simulation environments of various forms of economic, political and military interaction that
challenge students to understand relationships and scenarios. GIS-based layered maps with complex
and embedded links to text and multimedia information will serve as the basis for a variety of game-
like activities for exploring alternative scenarios in the U.S.-China relationship.

Development of these materials will have three very significant effects on higher education. The
materials will make the case for a large expansion of online education and thereby promote new
forms for education. Second, the organization that creates educational materials will have a
competitive advantage in taking the lead in providing the education itself. Third, failure of liberal

1Special thanks to Dr. Gary Williams and Dr. Kenna Taylor for their comments on this paper. The
usual disclaimers apply.

arts faculty and staff to play a key role in the development and use of these materials will lead to
severe disadvantages. Liberal arts colleges can self-disrupt and end up much stronger, adapt a little
and end up a shell of themselves, or react poorly and end up as a historical memory.

Introduction

The online and digital worlds greatly alter time and space as constraints on
education, opening up new opportunities to change the ways we define and practice
the educational process.2 But much of this depends on redefining the nature and
process of developing new kinds of educational materials for this world.
Traditionally, most educational materials have been books, most of which are
written by academics for a particular course. This book may have one or two
authors (more if edited) who produce more or less the same kinds of materials:
words and maybe a graph (perhaps an equation). These days many books will also
have a website with more words and some links and more frequently books are
digitized as e-books.

What is remarkable is how little we have been able to break the “book” mold3
and generate genuinely innovative interactive and multimedia learning experiences
for university students. The limitations on book innovation are connected to the
limitations on university innovation. This has just begun to change with options
such as Inkling and the iBooks textbook and more generally with some e-books.4
Even more innovative options, such as scenario-based training, virtual world
simulations, video game-like interactive environments and the like are largely found
in specialized firms whose clients are large corporations. A few universities and
liberal arts colleges have models of innovation in digital materials worth emulating.
But mostly, universities and colleges are left with Powerpoint-like options directed
toward pre-collegiate students. Compellingly rich, complex, and challenging virtual
environments for collegiate education are possible but mostly don’t exist or exist in
embryonic form because we lack the conceptualization, resources and organizations
for their creation. Most important, the development of a digital education world will
mean more changes than we have thus far imagined. This will be harder than we

2 Thomas D. Lairson, “Rethinking the ‘Course’ in an Online World,” Campus-Wide Information Systems,
16.5, (1999) 186-190. For data on online courses, see “Six Online Learning Trends,” The Chronicle of
Higher Education, November 6, 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Charts-6-Online-
Learning/129634/
3 See The Institute for the Future of the Book, http://www.futureofthebook.org/ and

http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory2.0/ The minimal changes in the university are
considered by Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital
Age, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
4 Inkling can be found at: http://www.inkling.com/ ; iBooks is at:

http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/ ; Lynn Neary, “At Last, They See: E-Books
Democratize Publishing,” National Public Radio, February 19, 2012,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/147112456/e-books-flipping-the-page-on-publishing-standards ;
Peter Meyer, Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience, O’Reilly Media,
2011, identifies many digital enhancements to the “book.” The Economist, “Enhanced E-books: Truly
Moving Literature,” February 21, 2012,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/02/enhanced-e-books

think and more consequential than we have realized. But, we may be at a tipping
point for the creation of a vast array of innovative digital educational media.

Getting from here to there will require transformations in organization,
conceptualization and business model. We will need to think in a genuinely
interdisciplinary fashion: drawing on analysis from business, technology and
pedagogy, we will need entrepreneurship animated by imagination to grasp the
opportunities in digital learning. To help understand these possibilities, this paper
conceptualizes this set of disruptive innovations as a “Pixar” model, based on the
extraordinary capabilities first created at Apple, then expanded at Pixar then
transported back to and expanded yet again at Apple.

The description of a Pixar model for academia helps to identify just how far
we are from being able to achieve a digital education. We consider the various
components of this model in terms of creating the environment needed to develop
truly innovative digital educational materials. This is illustrated with an example of
such materials – focused on understanding the relationship between the United
States and China – and the kinds of resources – personnel and otherwise – required
for their creation. The paper describes some of the interactive digital materials that
could be developed and integrated to permit students to think deeply about this
subject. It then considers the kinds of organization and people needed to develop
these capabilities and speculates about how and whether creating such teams might
be possible within a liberal arts college setting.

Based on the application of the Pixar model, three main propositions will be
developed and defended. First, high quality digital educational materials will play a
key role in the transformation of the process of education. These materials will
make the case for a much larger online component for education by creating
activities that substantially enhance the capacity to promote the goals of a liberal
education: engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective, values clarifying, decision-
making, information-evaluation learning. Locating these materials in an online
space will propel changes in education relating to time, space and process that
break with the 12th century model of education tied to agricultural seasons and
physical environments. Second, the greatest uncertainty is the source of these
materials. Whether faculty and others from liberal arts colleges will play a key role
in the development and even use of these materials is unclear. Only with substantial
change in attitude and organization can this happen. Third, the organization that
creates educational materials will have a competitive advantage in taking the lead in
providing the education itself. The initial point of disruptive innovation in the
coming years is not the college or university but at the level of creating digital
educational materials themselves. Other disruptions will flow from control over the
creation and application of these materials.

The pathway forward will come only by transforming the institutional order
for educational content, content creation and the organization of education.5 This
direction can be understood through the Pixar model of disruptive innovation, as
developed by Steve Jobs and the firms he created. Jobs is reported to have turned
his attention to disrupting the world of textbooks just before he died.6 This paper
applies some of the ideas of “Jobsian” disruption – in the realms of organization,
technology, content creation and business model – to the process of developing
collegiate educational materials for a digital world. I term this the Pixar Model, as a
way of defining not only how relationships in education must change to
accommodate this world but also how education itself will likely be disrupted by
these changes. To this point, what has largely held back the effects of a digital world
on education is not the hardware of the Internet or the computer but the lack of
compelling and truly innovative software. The iPad is just a curiosity without the
apps; so too, achieving the new world of digital education and the disruption it
portends awaits compelling digital content, that itself awaits a new system of
content creation. If this is to take place on the terrain of the college and university
and not in a completely new and perhaps distributed environment, it will require
new kinds of capabilities from “faculty” able to adjust to the complex connections
needed.

I. The Pixar Model of Disruptive Innovation7

Steve Jobs had many serious weaknesses, as a person and as a manager. As
one person put it, “I am a recovering assaholic. So I could recognize that in Steve.”8
But at some level, his obsessiveness and difficulties may have been the source for
the keen insights into how to understand and succeed in the digital business world.9
This did not come at first, as many important failures and years of trial and error
were needed to get it right, including understanding the real value of the Pixar
company Jobs purchased.

What he eventually “got right” was the creation of a model for operating in
the digital business world, a model I am calling the “Pixar Model,” for it was at

5 For an apocalyptic vision of the effects of online education, see Megan McArdle, “Envisioning a Post-
Campus America,” The Atlantic, February 13, 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/envisioning-a-post-campus-america/253032/
and Joseph King and Michael Nanfito, “A Potential Academic Future,” Inside Higher Ed, February 9,
2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/09/essay-imagines-future-academe
6 Isaacson, Walter (2011) Steve Jobs, New York: Simon & Schuster, Kindle Edition, 508-509. This

direction seems confirmed http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/apple-aims-to-take-on-the-
textbook-market/?partner=yahoofinance
7 Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Harper Business, 2011.
8 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Edition, 185.
9 Walter Issacson, “The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, April 2012,

http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/1

Pixar10 that this system of business, creation and technology first began to congeal.
The model was later carried back to Apple and reapplied over and over and
perfected to transform Apple in fifteen years from near-death to (at least for a time)
the most valuable company in the world.11 And this Pixar model helps us
understand what needs to happen for effective content creation for a digital
education revolution.

The main components of the Pixar model include:

A willingness to break existing product and business model molds,
specifically by using cutting edge digital capabilities. As Jobs certainly
understood, these capabilities would not only rapidly fall in price; they also
had many fungible features that provided leverage into additional
capabilities. An example is the inclusion of electronic versions of an Oxford
dictionary and the complete works of Shakespeare a pioneering use of digital
content to sell hardware.12
A determination to fight against industry standards until it worked. The
dominant design for the personal computer industry was established by the
Wintel system that provided the core of the IBM PC: hardware and software
were outsourced to separate firms and integrated to create an industry
standard. For Jobs, these elements had to be integrated into one firm and
made (somewhat) incompatible with other systems. This counterintuitive
position eventually turned the industry upside down when this capability
made it possible for Apple to define the post-PC world through its control of
both the hardware and software.13
Pixar was the intersection of content – what Jobs referred to as art - and
technology. Pixar was important not only for its appealing and popular
animated films but also for its technology – RenderMan. In this sense, the
people operating Pixar had to work assiduously to establish the idea of

10 The Pixar story can be found at: Tom Hormby, (January 22, 2007). "The Pixar Story: Fallon Forbes,
Dick Shoup, Alex Schure, George Lucas and Disney". In addition, see Issacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle
Edition, Chapter 19.
11 The Pixar model focuses on the business model for a digital world. A very different sense of the

sources of Apple’s success can be found in Adam Lashinsky, Inside Apple, Business Plus, 2012. We
should remember that when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 the company was on the verge of
bankruptcy.
12 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Ed. 223-25.
13 Michael Cusumano, “Technology Strategy and Management: The Legacy of Steve Jobs,”

Communications of the ACM, 54.12 (December 2011) 26-28. Isaacson, (2011), Kindle Ed. 335. Jonny
Evans, “The PC is Dying: The iPad and Mac Are Not,” Computerworld, January 26, 2012,
http://blogs.computerworld.com/19642/the_pc_is_dying_the_ipad_and_mac_are_not?source=CTWN
LE_nlt_pm_2012-01-26 ; Miles Giles, “Beyond the PC,” The Economist, October 8, 2011,
http://www.economist.com/node/21531109 . The ability to leverage hardware and software is
what explains Google’s decision to buy the mobile phone business of Motorola. Of course, Apple has
an unmatched array of products that leverage hardware and software. Knowledge@Wharton,
“Vertical Integration Works for Apple – But It Won’t for Everyone,” March 14, 2012,
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2959

linking technology to content and then to make the fusion into a viable
business plan. This intersection of technology and art was pushed to the
point that it transformed the movie industry, not the last time this would
happen, and it was a result of an obsession with doing it right and a refusal to
settle for second best. This began with Toy Story.14
An ability to define new categories of consumer products, usually by creating
new products and markets where none existed or recreating existing
products and markets in entirely new terms. This came with the Apple II, the
Macintosh operating system, the NeXT operating system, and most clearly
with the computer animated movie, the iPod, iTunes, iTunes store, the Apple
store, the computer as digital hub, the App store, the iPhone and the iPad.
The innovation in these products and services came from a readiness to think
beyond existing products and markets and craft products that would lead
consumers and markets into new spaces. But it also involved understanding
markets that were full of poor products and redefining them with high
quality products.
An obsession with quality, be it in the content, the software or product design
or in the people who worked for Pixar or Apple, combined with an obsession
with simplicity and the quality this can bring to products.
Creating new business models by leveraging the distributed systems created
by the networked digital world and linking this to the integrated systems of
technology and content that create platforms for distributed systems. Apple
has been able to define a new ecosystem for production of digital products,
combining physical products and digital products in highly creative ways.15
The iTunes store and the App store are the best examples. Here the iPhone,
iPod and iPad are platforms that facilitate the distributed creation of content
via music, books, and various media forms contained in Apps. The value of
the iPhone, iPod and iPad come from the extraordinary diversity of
capabilities that come from the legions of content creators. Beneath this is a
system of software and hardware modularity that supports and facilitates
this distributed process.
A deep understanding of the way digital business alters the relationship
between average cost and marginal cost and the business model
opportunities this presents. The marginal cost for creating and delivering
the next copy of a digital product is always close to zero. When this product
is linked to enhancing a particular physical product, the best strategy is to
charge a low price for the digital product in order to drive the sales of the
physical product. The price of a digital copy of a physical product must also
be decoupled from the price of a physical copy and tied much closer to the

14 David Price, The Pixar Touch, New York: Knopf, 2008; Daniel Terdiman, “With Pixar, Steve Jobs
Changed the Film Industry Forever,” C/Net News, October 6, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/8301-
13579_3-20116912-37/with-pixar-steve-jobs-changed-the-film-industry-forever/ ; Austin Bunn,
“Welcome to Planet Pixar, Wired, June 2004,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/pixar.html
15 Ron Adler and Rahul Kapoor, “Value Creation in Innovation Ecosystems,” Strategic Management

Journal, 31 (2010) 306-333.

marginal price of the digital copy. This creates two business advantages:
First, it builds a critical mass of digital products, which permits profits from
the extremely large economies of scale of digital products. Second, this
permits very large advantages to accrue to the linked physical product,
making its value rise.16

This set of seven elements to the Pixar model captures the key features of what
propelled Apple (and Pixar) to great success. More important, it defines the key
features of a digital business model that we can use to evaluate the evolving world
of digital education. One passage from the Issacson biography of Jobs provides a
good statement of many of the aspects of the Pixar model:

[T]he iPod became the essence of everything Apple was destined to be:
poetry connected to engineering, arts and creativity intersecting with
technology, design that’s bold and simple. It had an ease of use that came
from being an integrated end-to-end system, from computer to FireWire to
device to software to content management. When you took an iPod out of the
box, it was so beautiful that it seemed to glow, and it made all other music
players look as if they had been designed and manufactured in Uzbekistan.17

Of course, beyond the beauty was a remarkable set of generalized and specialized
capabilities along with an ease and flexibility of use. The Pixar model is about
breaking the mold of existing digital products through a combination of compelling
content, a simplicity and beauty of design, with an extraordinary range of interactive
and innovative products, all defined by technology and made possible by an
innovation in organization.

II. The Pixar Model and The Emerging Digital Value Chain

The Pixar model defines a kind of “gold standard” for business models in a
digital world. How can this be applied to the as-yet unformed world of digital
educational materials for university students? In simple terms, the Pixar model
establishes a point of attraction, a place to aim, and a set of ideals that can define a
future path for those who believe in the value of truly innovative digital education.
The Pixar model provides a point of comparison for imagining the kinds of
intellectual and organizational features needed to create this digital educational

16 This explains why the business model for iBooks is to set the price for the digital book at $15. It is
only feasible when the value chain includes both an iPad/iPhone and the digital book. Moreover, a
split of the iBook price of 30% to Apple and 70% to the content creator can work even if it is so
different from the traditional 15% to the content creator of a physical book. This system also works
best using a distributed model of content creation. Knowledge@Wharton, “Textbook Case: Apple and
Others Strive to Be the Next Wave in Educational Publishing,” February 15, 2012,
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2944
17 Isaacson, Steve Jobs, Kindle Edition, 393.

environment. Whether this can happen so as to strengthen or weaken the liberal
arts college remains to be seen.

The Pixar model will define the business environment for the development of
digital educational media. First, and perhaps most important, is the close
connection between hardware and software – in this case, between the device and
the content. Just as with iTunes and the iPad/iPhone, the business model that will
dominate must integrate device(s) and content. As a result, the device and the
content will co-evolve in quality and capabilities. This is why the three major
players in this competition will be Apple, Amazon and perhaps Barnes and Noble18,
and this also explains why all three now compete with a unique combination of
device and content.19 Content providers that operate closely through a distributed
network tied to one or all of these integrated systems will have a chance of success
by their presence in these value chains. This can include existing publishers –
dramatically restructured – but also the well-supported and redefined content
providers in a university or college.20

The institutional affiliation of future content providers – if any – is unclear
but has significant consequences. Why is it important for professors to be the
creators? Why not just let specialists create and professors apply? Why do creators
of digital materials need to be users of these materials? The answer – aside from
professors being the content experts – is that new materials will require new
pedagogy, the creation of which will come hand in hand with a trial and error
process in the “classroom.” There is also a very good chance the best creators of
digital educational materials, especially the aggregators, will also assume the role of
teachers. Users need to be creators because such a synergy offers great advantages
over specialization – development time and upgrades are shorter and the user can
tailor and redefine materials in near real time. Thus, the creator-user amalgam will
have significant competitive advantages in delivering the engaging educational

18 Julie Bosman, “The Bookstore’s Last Stand, New York Times, January 28, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/business/barnes-noble-taking-on-amazon-in-the-fight-of-
its-life.html?_r=1&hpw
19 And this explains why successful tablets will need to link technology to quality content.
20 The price of digital educational materials, following the notion of near-zero marginal costs, should

be quite low, but with variable pricing based on the complexity of the materials. Modular pieces of a
“book” can be priced very low while complex and integrated systems may be priced higher. This is
analogous to the pricing of apps for the iPad/iPhone. The current price competition between
Amazon and Apple, emerging from the government suit over agency pricing by Apple, is a
manifestation of this very low marginal cost for digital products. This price competition will, in the
near to long term, considerably reduce the role of traditional publishers and contribute to the
creation of a new digital value chain, with a potentially large role for liberal arts colleges. David
Streitfeld, “Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon is Set to Shake Rivals,” New York Times, April 11, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/business/media/amazon-to-cut-e-book-prices-shaking-
rivals.html?_r=1&hp

experience. This is why the point of disruption of existing education will be the
digital materials used to create a digital education.21

Dramatic changes will be needed for developing the creator-user role for
faculty in liberal arts colleges. Perhaps the easiest part is creating these materials
will require new kinds of tools, specifically new forms of software to ease the
development of the complex environments for high quality digital education. Some
of these capabilities already exist and are discussed below. But it will also require
new kinds of faculty, those who combine sophisticated content knowledge with
sophisticated technological understanding – the Pixar combination. Such persons
do exist today but they are still rare and the structure of organizations is such that
their skills are mostly wasted. Faculty will need to be paired with advanced tech
support personnel, able to translate the content and pedagogy into new kinds of
software systems. The creation of virtual 3D environments, for purposes of
simulation or immersion experiences, will require sophisticated skills and
considerable specialization of effort.

Cultural changes are needed. Currently, efforts to develop new forms of
digital education are invariably subjected to intense criticism from faculty, and this
criticism can only be overcome with a stupendous success. That is, many – perhaps
most - existing faculty intensely resist using new digital materials (consider how
many use e-books, hardly a significant innovation), waiting until these are perfected
before considering adoption. Instead, we faculty should think in Pixar terms: trial
and failure is not a negative but a positive indication of progress and should serve as
a basis for improving the next effort. But, can the evaluation committees of new
faculty – composed of faculty and administrators – understand this process and the
implications for innovation?

The development of new digital media, in conjunction with rising levels of
competition in educational markets, will hasten the creation of new organizational
forms. There are several possible directions. The successful version(s) will need to
build on the Pixar model and adapt that to the needs of creating, validating,
distributing and using digital educational materials. The organizational elements
will perhaps be the largest barrier to success because few if any existing
organizations have the internal capacities to succeed nor the ability to assemble
these capabilities into an effective business model. Is the digital educational world
going to be created by an alliance of Inkling, Apple, Facebook, the for-profit
university, Knewton22, a video game developer like NHN23 and the animation

21 Clayton Christensen, a highly regarded analyst of disruptive innovation, has recently focused on
the effects of new firms – for-profit online educational institutions – on existing educational
providers – the traditional college and university. My analysis suggests the point of disruption will
not come from such competitors necessarily. Rather, it will come from organizations able to develop
and deliver new forms of education based on innovative educational materials. This could be
traditional colleges and universities, radically transformed to adjust to this new environment.
Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring, The Innovative University, Jossey-Bass, 2011.
22 http://www.knewton.com/

studios of Moonbot24? Will the most innovative and technologically savvy liberal
arts faculty, frustrated by the conservatism of their institutions, exit and link into
distributed networks to create the content “apps” for this world? And will online
alliances of these faculty begin providing the education as well?

Why not just rely on the existing partnership between individual faculty and
book publishers? Perhaps the best reason is current publishers are like music
companies before iTunes, relying on old technology and deeply concerned about
taking any step that can cannibalize existing products. Few will be able to make the
break with the past and change enough to become effective players in a digital
world. Just as Apple was needed to develop digital music and Amazon was needed
to create an effective e-book business model, this will require organizations/firms
with a clear position in the future of the digital world.

What about universities and colleges, specifically liberal arts colleges? Can
liberal arts college faculty play a central role in creating the educational materials
for a digital world? The answer is they should because liberal arts colleges define
the best in education, and maybe they will. At the same time, our first instinct might
be to see college faculty as a lot like music company executives, flailing around
trying to figure out how to deal with pirated music before the creation of the iTunes
store. But this would be unfair to the music executives: at least they understood
they had a big problem.

Most faculty have no idea the threat posed by the digital world; they are
more like the scribes in 1460 who were sure hand-copied books would always be
superior to the book printed on a machine. As one observer has put it, faculty and
universities may have already “been pushed to the margins to watch as their world
is reconstructed elsewhere.”25 Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the mindset of most
faculty, who have neither the time nor the inclination to analyze the situation before
them. This leaves them in the position of these same monks in 1500, who cannot
imagine how this same printing press soon will completely overturn their world.
Some few faculty with the technical background have made important strides, but
often in spite of their organization not because of it. Even those who may want to be
involved in using technology to create educational materials are forced to choose
between teaching, research and technology. Only rarely do these areas coincide in
incentives and evaluation. In short, it is unclear whether we liberal arts faculty will
react like the scribes of the 15th century facing the new printing press or more like
five year olds in the 21st century who pick up iPads and instantly know how to use
them.

23 http://www.nhnusainc.com/usa/index.nhn
24 http://www.moonbotstudios.com/about.html
25 Richard DiMillo, “Let’s Party Like its 1995,” The John William Pope Center for Higher Education

Policy, February 22, 2012, http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2656

What about administrative leadership at liberal arts colleges? The number
with technical skills and interests is very small and few will stake their political
position on the role of technology. At the same time, only strong and very
innovative administrative leadership, often a very scarce resource, in alliance with
faculty leaders with a clear vision (equally scarce), can leverage the values and skills
of a liberal arts environment to this task. Almost surely, making the leap from here
to there will require many leaders like Steve Jobs. Perhaps unpleasant, these will be
people unwilling to accept the millions of excuses about why “X” cannot be done, for
there will be many, many obstacles.

This pessimism is countered by the great natural role for liberal arts colleges.
Because the core purpose of the newest versions of digital educational materials is
the development of highly creative, complex and exceptional quality forms of critical
thinking in students, the natural locus for creating these materials should be the
liberal arts college. It is liberal arts colleges that have devoted great energy and
resources to develop engaged teaching based on multiple perspectives that
promotes critical thinking. But whether the faculty and administration of these
institutions will figure out how to leverage these resources into the digital age is
quite uncertain. For this to happen, liberal arts colleges will need to disrupt
themselves, and that is very unusual. IBM did it, but only after facing near death.26
Xerox would not do it, and gave away the digital store they had created.27 Kodak
invented the digital camera and then was killed by it.28

III. Examples in the Present?

The key to creating great educational materials for digital natives29 will be to
redefine them in terms of all of the engaging value that digitization can offer and link
that with developing complex analytical and intellectual sensibilities in students.
These new media must be designed and delivered in such a way that individualized
configurations of content can be provided on demand or even through adaptive
responses.30 Interactive text, hypertext, semantic web, pictures, video, music,
simulations and immersive environments, all integrated and mutually supportive
and deliverable on demand to a variety of devices, can be designed to be as
compelling as a great movie, video game, or book and used to make learning and

26 Louis Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic
Change, New York: Haper, 2003.
27 Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, New York:

Harper, 2000.
28 Knowledge@Wharton, “What is Wrong With This Picture: Kodak’s 30-year Slide Into Bankruptcy,”

2/15/12,
http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn/index.cfm?fa=article&articleid=2541&languageid=1
29 An interesting hypothesis about technology relates the capacity for change and adjustment to the

pace of generational change. Only after a generation emerges for whom the technology is completely
natural can real changes associated with this technology begin. Everyone in advanced and many
poor nations seventeen years old and younger in 2012 was “born on the web,” thereby opening the
door to significant future changes in the near future.
30 One existing edutech startup devoted to this is Knewton, http://www.knewton.com/

knowledge the same. These materials should encourage and enhance face-to-face
interaction between teacher and student, not in any sense replace it. But the
materials can expand dramatically the arc of interaction between student and
professor – in virtual as well as face-to-face settings - by changing the nature of
classroom discussion and experience. Most important, such materials can be used
to accomplish the educational goals much of the existing materials and pedagogy fail
to do: enhance the ability to absorb and process information, analyze, compute,
evaluate, innovate and decide.31 One thing we should have learned from the birth of
the PC era is not to criticize experiments, for we can never know which ones will
change through a creative mashup and provide a platform for radical innovation.

Though compelling and complex interactive educational materials are rare,
some early versions of parts of these kinds of materials can be found, often in the
humanities. Examples include both content and content creation systems:

The first set of examples includes various kinds of software environments for the
creation of digital media.

Scalar - http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/?page_id=6
Scalar is a software environment for integrating text and multiple sources of
video and images.

Processing - http://processing.org/
Processing is a software environment for creating images, animations and
interactions.

Ani - http://www.looksgood.de/log/2010/06/ani/
Provides an animation library for Processing.

GLGraphics - http://glgraphics.sourceforge.net/
Also supports animation for Processing.

Traer.Physics 3.0 - http://murderandcreate.com/physics/
Another software support for animation in Processing.

Unfolding - http://unfoldingmaps.org/

31 Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,
University of Chicago Press, 2011 documents the weaknesses in current educational outcomes. The
tradition of the lecture is also under question, again. Daniel de Vise, “Colleges Looking Beyond the
Lecture,” Washington Post, February 15, 2012,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/colleges-looking-beyond-the-
lecture/2012/02/03/gIQA7iUaGR_story.html?hpid=z4
Many of the early efforts to develop simulations and immersive environments display the
weaknesses coming from the absence of a clear connection between academic content and the
technology. Many are “cool” but lack any clear academic purpose.

Software environment for creating interactive maps and data visualization.

Tile Mill - http://mapbox.com/tilemill/
Software for creating GIS-based maps

Gelph – http://gephi.org/
Gelph is an interactive platform for the visualization and analysis of data.

Twine - http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/
Software for creating interactive stories.

Celtx - https://www.celtx.com/
Celtx is a software environment for managing, storing and developing digital
media.

JUNG - http://jung.sourceforge.net/
JUNG is a software environment for the modeling, analysis and visualization
of data.

Vue - http://vue.tufts.edu/
Vue provides software that provides a “visual environment for structuring,
presenting, and sharing digital information.”

Popcorn - http://popcornjs.org/
Software for linking web and video.

Sophie - http://www.sophieproject.org/
Sophie is software for reading and writing interactive books and other forms
of text and multimedia.

Google Sketchup - http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/yourworldin3d/
Sketchup is a 3D modeling tool.

The following are examples of digital content that provide important features of
new digital education.

Ubuweb - http://ubuweb.com/
Archive of films and audio works

USC School of Cinematic Arts (Walden, A Game)
http://cinema.usc.edu/interactive/research/walden.cfm
A virtual simulation of the Walden experiment by Thoreau.

Hypercities http://hypercities.com/about/
An example of geospatial humanities, Hypercities permits a deep and
detailed examination of cities through time with layered GIS maps.

OmnesViae http://omnesviae.org/
Interactive map with embedded information about travel in the 4th century
Roman World

There are intellectual resources on many liberal arts campuses that can
become leaders propelling these institutions into the digital world. Whether they
are there by accident or by design and strategy makes all the difference. Almost
certainly, the most advanced digital educational materials are located in the natural
sciences.32 One impressive example is Mastering Biology, which provides an
integrated system for teaching collegiate biology.33 This system is based online and
offers a wide variety of visual aids for conceptualizing complex processes, a system
of engaging interactive activities to improve understanding, capturing the outcomes
of these activities by student, online exams and direct feedback by student and by
class to the professor. All this creates a rich learning environment outside of class
that provides much information to the professor about the state of student learning
before class. Use of Mastering Biology permits much more specialized classroom
time, focusing not only on particular problems for students but also encouraging
class time activities that investigate more advanced and higher order skills and
analysis.

There are also examples of organizational innovation related to liberal arts
colleges and technology. NITLE is an organizational innovation involving a coalition
of liberal arts colleges designed to promote the development of technology for
education. Unfortunately, the depth of its effects at any given institution varies
widely. At Rollins, NITLE has a very low profile among faculty and administrators
and this may or may not be true elsewhere. Because NITLE is dependent on the
administrative leadership at member institutions, it may have difficulty engaging in
the kind of entrepreneurial and disruptive innovation needed.

Mostly in spite of or outside of existing organizational structures, there are
faculty with advanced skills in computer simulation of social systems and with the
time, interests and incentives to work closely with faculty in specialized social
science fields. Two examples are:

One is an organizational model that is very interesting: the GIS-3D animation
program at Washington College run by Stewart Bruce. Here Bruce has a
reconfigured teaching load, employs and teaches many students, operates in
an environment much of which is outside the university and the sources of
funding require a much more entrepreneurial attitude. The result is a
student-based entrepreneurial environment engaged in creating and using

32 Many thanks to Dr. Eileen Gregory, Professor of Biology at Rollins and Dr. Susan Welch, Assistant
Professor of Biology at Rollins, for their help in my understanding of digital education in biology.
33 http://www.masteringbio.com/site/product/for-instructors.html

advanced digital materials supported by funded from grants and contracts.34
This may be the best current example of a Pixar-like organizational
environment in a liberal arts college. Its nature suggests some of the radical
and disruptive innovations needed to migrate to the new world.

A second example is Dr. Forrest Stonedahl at Centre College who is deeply
involved in using computer simulations to analyze and understand questions
that range across social, environmental and natural sciences.35 He is able to
develop multi-agent simulations as part of projects using agent-based
modeling of social (and other) systems. These are important not only for
students to use and manipulate as a part of understanding various social
processes, but can also be used as devices students can even build
themselves to understand processes and test their own hypotheses.

Stonedahl’s work in agent-based modeling of complex adaptive systems is a
very different kind of computational social and natural science: creating and
learning through experimental, interactive, hypothesis testing virtual
environments. These simulation environments can be entirely built entirely
in silico or as part of a human-based simulation built in virtual environments.
One important premise is: to understand a social system you need to model it
in a simulation environment and then examine its processes through
experimentation. This generates powerful forms of interactive and
experiential learning.36

There are other interesting examples of creative ideas for digital educational
media. An example of creatively developing learning environments from computer-
aided and robotic environments is Constructionism. This approach works to design
new forms of person-to-person and person-to-computer interaction and
engagement as a basis for promoting learning.37 An example of entrepreneurial
effort to move beyond the constraints of a structured university environment to a
completely online and free educational experience is by Sebastian Thrun, a
computer science professor at Stanford and Google fellow. He has resigned from a
tenured position at Stanford to set up an online university – Udacity - of sorts to
offer free courses to all takers.38 This is an example of potentially disruptive

34 Personal communication to the author from Stewart Bruce, 1/9/12. For an example of the output
of this, see http://youtu.be/3XSLN7hGURQ
35 http://forrest.stonedahl.com/index.html ; http://forrest.stonedahl.com/projects.html
36 The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation offers examples of such work:

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html ; Netlogo is an environment for the development and
visualization of computer simulations and is a creation of the Center for Connected Learning at
Northwestern: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
37 http://constructionism2012.etl.ppp.uoa.gr/
38 Blake J. Graham, “Robotics Mastermind Takes Education Online,”
http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=5567334726408077325&ids=dj8PdPsMe30Qdz8Td3cPdPoRdiMSd3c
QcjwMd3kUcP4UdPcTdzkRb38QdzgVcj4Pc3cVc30UcjsSdjkIc3oVcz8Pc3sTcj4Sc3cOdPoRdiMUdPkSdPcQd3oOdjgOdPwRdzkR
&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-ttl-4&ut=33TqmshA2uCl41

innovation coming from simply creating online lectures, the value of which is
students can work through them at their own pace.39

Scientists at the University of Washington have called on the intuitive
guesswork of anyone willing to contribute to develop new ways to fold proteins
related to a model enzyme so as to improve the functioning of the enzyme. The
online competitive game Foldit was designed to use players’ guesses about
variations in ways to fold proteins and create new proteins.40 Collaborative learning
across space is found in the course “Looking for Whitman.”41

An effort at organizational innovation linked to innovation in content
creation is the Open Learning Initiative, based at Carnegie Mellon University.
Linked to funding by several foundations, including the Gates Foundation, OLI
focuses on introductory courses offered in large sections and works to improve
completion rates. The software systems designed for courses are based on learning
theory and work to build skills and provide effective feedback to students and to
professors.42

IV. Studying U.S.-China Relations in a Digital World

If existing digital resources for studying U.S.-China relations are inadequate,
what would really good digital media look like and do? 43 Some answers can be
found through digital mashups of the best existing resources with a dash of
creativity and specialization thrown in for this particular topic.44 The examples
described below are well within reach but lack an organizational environment for
their creation. The standard for these new digital learning media is to incorporate
high levels of engagement and interactivity, provide factual and analytical
information of significant value, expand the ability to locate, evaluate and apply
information in realistic scenarios, and improve the ability to develop effective
alternatives together with analysis of potential outcomes in policy environments. In
addition, these media should support various forms of social media for engaging in
team-playing and sharing ideas and must provide a variety of “testing” settings

39 For another example, see Kevin Carey, “College for $99 a Month,” Washington Monthly,
September/October 2009
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_month.php?page=all ;
another example of this approach is Udemy http://www.udemy.com/
40 Jessica Marshall, “Victory for Crowdsourced Biomolecule Design,” Nature, January 22, 2012,

http://www.nature.com/news/victory-for-crowdsourced-biomolecule-design-1.9872 ; Scientific
American, “Foldit Online Protein Puzzle,” http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-
science/project.cfm?id=foldit-protein-exploration-puzzle
41 http://lookingforwhitman.org/
42 Marc Parry, “Candace Thille Is Redesigning Courses,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2012,

A-10. http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
43 I teach such a course, both in the U.S. and in China, but without the benefits of compelling digital

educational media. http://myweb.rollins.edu/tlairson/china/uschinarel.html
44 I am unaware of the existence of any of these digital media in the forms described.

linked to adaptive responses to support learning. Finally, the new systems must
incorporate learning analytics by collecting data and providing analytics from
individual students and from data aggregation across various professor-defined
groups of students.

There are two important forms of digital media that could dramatically
advance the learning environment for studying U.S.-China relations.45 The best
model for compelling digital educational media is the video game with an AI-based
interactive 3D virtual environment and incorporating SIRI-like input and response
capabilities that asks and answers questions. This should be combined with a
computer simulation or important features of U.S.-China relations linked to
interactive maps with rich and extensive embedded data. At present, various
elements of such media can be seen in separate systems. The newest version of Sim
City is a great example of an interactive game with considerable information,
difficult problems in balancing competing problems and complexities in applying
information to develop choices and preferable outcomes. 46

The basic learning environment for studying U.S.-China relations is a GIS-
based but enhanced series of maps, incorporating visual, audio, quantitative and
textual information and mashed-upped with Google Earth, Hypercities and multi-
touch capabilities.47 These GIS-based and dynamically layered maps with
embedded complex links to text and multimedia information provide the basis for a
variety of game-like activities for learning through exploring alternative scenarios in
the U.S.-China relationship. This new kind of map will serve as a reference point
for developing simulation environments of various forms of economic, political and
military interaction that challenge students to understand relationships and
scenarios.

Here are several examples of high quality information display and the use of
animation and touch-based interactivity:

Example of data effectively embedded in an interactive chart:
https://www.tradingview.com/

Example of effective animation supporting conceptualization:
http://hint.fm/ http://hint.fm/wind/

45 And these media would surely contain considerable modularity that would permit reuse in other
courses. The creation of modular elements in digital technology will require theoretical analysis of
the ways different knowledge components are related – the ways ideas are complementary and
fungible.
46 Nathanael Massey, “SimCity 2013 Players will Face Tough Choices on Energy and the

Environment,” Scientific American, March 12, 2012,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=simcity-2013-players-face-tough-energy-
environment-choices&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20120313
47 Google Earth http://www.google.com/earth/index.html ; Hypercities http://hypercities.com/ ;

Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS-SLGAWxHY

Example of effective narration combined with animated data:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-chart-20

An example of intense interaction with maps and networks compatible with
the “touch” experience of an iPad is http://max-planck-research-
networks.net/ .

http://max-planck-research-networks.net/

Here is a good map, but we need to imagine how much more can be done to turn this
into a dynamically interactive source of information:

Source: The Economist, http://www.economist.com/node/17601499

What can be done to make this a really good map? First, this map should be GIS-
based with a series of unfolding and dynamic and semi-transparent layers focus on
discreet issues related to the South China Sea:

various boundaries and claims for all nations in the area
pictures of the various atolls and islands
estimates of oil recovery and locations of oil fields
potential points of military engagement
actual points of military engagement between China and Vietnam
locations of U.S. military bases with data on troops and capabilities
Chinese military forces and bases, especially in Fujian province across
the Taiwan Strait
trade and money flows between the US and China
data on the structure of GPNs for US firms such as Apple, including an
interactive layered map with the locations, trade values and % of
value chains for a Macbook Air, and iPad and iPhone and
similar maps for manufacturing a Buick and a Volkswagen in
Shanghai;
systems of global production, animated so the actual movement of
components can be traced through the value chain.

This visually compelling way of displaying information draws the viewer into the
material leading them in true interactive fashion to explore, providing the user
paths for investigation and the resources to engage in this exploration. An example,
though limited by its circumstances, is Burning Man by Flint Hahn.48

Source: http://xmasons.com/prints/burning-man-infographic/

Each of these dimensions is a doorway to a cascading collection of more
information, much like working down through a fractal but with links and
connections to topics and issues related to the learning simulations.

The maps would serve as information repositories for the simulations of U.S.-
China relations. The model for interactive learning is the video game, which in spite
of its often-deserved negative image, has very strong learning capabilities.49 Video
game-like experiential activities with varying kinds of tests built in to enhance
learning can be designed around important issues in U.S.-China relations.50

48 http://xmasons.com/prints/burning-man-infographic/
49 Robert Lee Hotz, “When Gaming is Good for You,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2012,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263273943183932.html
50 The learning efficacy of “tests” is well known, but the relentless time schedule of a semester class

at a fixed time prevents repeated testing. The online world, especially one that alters this fixed pace,
easily encompasses this role for testing and can do so in ways that are varied and even interesting.

An example might include a short simulation in which the U.S. engages in
efforts to coerce China to revalue its currency by naming China a currency
manipulator and couples that with higher tariffs on some selected products.
Students could take on either the U.S. or China role and play against the computer or
against each other with the computer as moderator of actions and consequences. To
complete the simulation, students would need to examine two sets of information:
1) Short case studies of trade wars in other contexts; and 2) a description of the
resources possessed by China and the U.S. that could be used in this conflict. The
computer game would be written so as to include an array of AI-based responses to
actions taken by either side. Following some prescribed sequence of action taken by
a student, the game would prompt for an explanation of an action and reference
either resources or case studies. Before proceeding, a student would need to
explain his/her actions – a kind of test. The game would collect together the
responses made by a student as a report and send this to the professor. Games like
this easily accommodate multiple players, which could include features that require
explanation of proposed actions before a decision is reached. A wide variety of
skills and knowledge – decision-making, evaluating information, analysis of
alternatives and outcomes - are engaged by such a relatively simple game and many
of the issues of time and space are resolved with the online format.

Even more complex simulations could be built around managing a conflict
relating to the South China Sea, in which the U.S. would need to deal with the
diplomatic and strategic dimensions of a Chinese-Vietnamese military engagement
over control of oilfields. Each of the online activities should be embedded in a social
network that leads students to discuss what is happening with each other outside of
class, a sort of blog, but one tied to the experiences involved in the course. Students
could be engaged in making changes to the game(s) itself, which also involves a new
level of learning. For example, a key element of the Netlogo environment for
developing simulations is the readily available ability to experiment with the
simulation by changing the parameters for the variables and rerunning the
simulation. More complicated, but still relatively easy, is changing the structure of
the simulation through altering the code itself. Such capabilities invite a level of
interactivity, engagement and learning not typically available in non-digital learning
environments.51

Wolf-Sheep-Grass Simulation in Netlogo

Dan Berrett, “Harvard Conference Seeks to Jolt University Teaching,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
February 5, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Seeks-to-Jolt/130683/
51 An example is creating a model to forecast the development of slums in Mumbai:

http://meridian.aag.org/callforpapers/program/AbstractDetail.cfm?AbstractID=41891

V. A Pixar Model for Liberal Arts Colleges

What do liberal arts colleges need to do to leverage their capabilities as the
best form of learning into the world of creating effective digital teaching materials?

1) An institution-wide commitment to change, especially in support of an
entrepreneurial mindset. At the very least, what is required is an
institution-wide commitment to create, accept, protect and nourish a part
of the institution (the Pixar unit) with such an attitude.52
2) A deep understanding by college leaders of the strategic value of the Pixar
unit for the success and even survival of the institution. Providing the
new forms of education will create its own demand.
3) 3) New incentives to support faculty-technologist collaboration in
creating digital materials: reconfiguring load, evaluations, the nature of
teaching and tenure, compensation, support resources, conceptions of
time and space.
4) 4) Design a business model for the Pixar unit based on developing new
digital teaching media and providing new forms of education based on
those media.

52 The value of a “skunkworks” for promoting innovation is considered in Aaron Shapiro, “Stop
Blabbing About Innovation and Start Actually Doing It,” FastCompany, April 16, 2012,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1833190/stop-blabbing-about-innovation-and-start-actually-doing-
it

5) 5) Dramatic expansion of the technical skills and content skills of
technical support personnel and a redirection of responsibilities toward
creating digital media.
6) 6) Development of student technology resources for creating these
materials – students as interns and courses devoted to content creation.53
7) 7) Acceptance of a trial and error process of change and an understanding
of failure as a sign of progress.
8) 8) A willingness to link the institution into the value chain for the creation
of digital educational materials, even if this means a deep partnership
with companies like Apple
9) 9) Most important, liberal arts colleges need to understand their real
competitive advantage may not lie in leafy campuses but in an approach
to ideas, learning, thinking and education and leverage this into the
digital age.

The biggest question of all is can liberal arts colleges make this leap that
requires self-disruptive behavior? We can estimate the chances through judgments
about the mindset of administrators, faculty and information technology
departments. Most senior administrators are aware the liberal arts colleges are
facing “challenging” times, but the primary focus is on the unsustainable levels of
tuition and the problems of controlling costs and increasing retention. Very few
think in terms of an online revolution and disruptive innovation and the threats and
opportunities this presents. Very few institutions have created a new
administrative unit with the resources and autonomy to operate in terms of a Pixar
model.54

Some faculty “get it” and have made important strides in developing new
ideas, but they typically operate in isolation from each other and with limited
understanding and support from other faculty and even from administrators. The
business school faculty are no more likely than in humanities (maybe less) to grasp
the implications of the new environment. And IT departments, focused on
managing the inventory of computers, the network and software support systems,
have little time to imagine a changed role in the new digital content world. If asked
about this, most administrators, faculty and IT managers would probably assert that
liberal arts colleges are mostly immune from these challenges and have little to
worry about.

53 In addition to the examples from Stewart Bruce and Washington College, an international business
course at Rollins has students creating apps for mobile devices.
54 Perhaps the best example of such a capability is the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia

Tech, http://c21u.gatech.edu/about-c21u . Here, experimental entrepreneurialism, partnerships
with private firms, and strong technology support for faculty experiments replicate many of the
features of the Pixar model.

VI. Strategic Consequences of New Digital Media

They could hardly be more wrong, for the point of disruptive innovation will
come first and most powerfully from the creators of new digital media.

Why will good digital educational materials change the way education takes
place?

Online education has made significant strides in the past decade, but it remains a
niche mode especially in liberal arts colleges. Though the role of online education is
probably at an inflection point moving toward exponential rates of change, there are
still significant barriers to mainstreaming this mode of education.55 This is largely
because the materials for online education are not especially compelling in
demonstrating a case for the educational value of online education that is as strong
as the cost case for such a system.56 None of the primary groups engaged by online
education - students, faculty or even administrators – really believe the use of online
courses, even in a blended learning setting, is as good and certainly not better than a
traditional classroom setting. What is missing from this system is the compelling
digital materials that are so good they make this case. Just as the spreadsheet
program was sufficient to justify spending the money for a computer 30 years ago –
the definition of the “killer app” – these kinds of materials are the missing link in
creating successful online education.

Once these materials are available, the educational process will begin to change
and will co-evolve with the materials. New educational possibilities, primarily the
ability to live up to our own expectations, will flow from the relationship of new
technologies and new practices. Four major structural changes in the “course” are
likely: separating the “course” from the semester; expanding and enhancing the
classroom in time and space; individualizing both the pace of learning and the level
of learning; and seamlessly embedding processes of student and course assessment
into the educational materials.57

The relationship between time in and out of the classroom will change, so that
working with and mastering digital educational materials will provide a
prerequisite for attending class. This will elevate dramatically the quality of

55 There are many reasons put forward for taking courses online, from cost to competition. But the
only good reason is that going online provides a value added that cannot come in any other way.
56 Studies of the use of digital materials in class suggest a significant disconnect to learning goals. “It

found that most professors relied on text-based assignments and materials. In the instances when
professors did decide to use interactive tools like online video, many of those technologies were not
connected to learning objectives, the study found.” Nick DeSantis, “Study Suggests Many Professors
Use Interactive Tools Ineffectively in Online Courses,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2012
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/study-suggests-many-professors-use-interactive-tools-
ineffectively-in-online-courses/35677?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
57 Lairson, “Rethinking the ‘Course’ in an Online World.” Some of these structural changes have

begun to happen.

classroom time. By sorting students into different levels of mastery of digital
materials, professors can work on different levels in different classes. Of course, this
requires much more individualized and specialized classes, tailored to the
capabilities students bring to the class, and data supplied from the online learning
activities. Learning time away from class will be enhanced by social media, tied to
virtual learning spaces and integrated into digital materials. Students will play an
active role in creating and individualizing virtual learning spaces.

Not only will what we call the “course” morph into unrecognizable forms, the
nature of the “degree” will also be transformed. Virtually all universities and liberal
arts colleges retain a “degree” that is a composite of courses that are the result of
politically negotiated relationships among faculty. The evidence linking these
degrees to desired educational outcomes is minimal. The new world of complex and
sophisticated digital materials will change this in dramatic ways. Most important,
new forms of digital materials will make much easier and clearer the connection
between learning and specific educational competencies and capabilities, including
the most sophisticated of those related to critical thinking. Digital materials will
allow for the continuing individualized instruction needed to teach, examine and
certify various kinds of capabilities. This will have massive effects on the structure
of degrees, turning them into composites of “courses” that lead to definable and
demonstrable abilities. For liberal arts to remain viable in this new world, it too will
need to have definable and demonstrable outcomes, which are possible but require
a completely new mindset among faculty – a Pixar mindset. And this process will
also accelerate the movement toward certification of specific capabilities rather
than working toward a composite degree.58

Why will the organization that creates educational materials have a
competitive advantage in providing the education itself?

In short, why is the point of disruption at the level of digital educational
materials and not at the level of the university itself, as Clayton Christensen
contends? The primary reason is new online forms will have decisive cost
advantages over traditional education and once the educational experience in online
is as good or even better than traditional classrooms (based on student reports and
outcome measures) disruption will proceed apace. But achieving this level of
quality will require much better digital materials and the “course” that emerges will
be as much changed as the materials themselves. Creating and using the materials
together will provide a decisive competitive advantage over those who specialize in
creating or using.59

58 Tamar Levin, “Beyond the College Degree: Online Educational Badges,” New York Times, March 4,
2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-
educational-badges.html?ref=education
59 One interesting but flawed precursor to the world of linked digital materials and digital education

is O’Reilly Media, which provides digital publishing and digital education. http://oreilly.com/

We are in the midst of a competition over the e-book, with various firms
attempting to leverage existing and new resources and capabilities to capture or
even dominate this market. Amazon will leverage its Kindle device and a wide array
of content and Apple will do the same, with the iPhone and iPad and its iBooks
system. Both Amazon and Apple have created a integrated system linking device
and content that attempts to design in a distributed system of content authoring.
Apple has done this with the iBooks authoring app and Amazon with its publishing
unit. Other competitors with one piece of the value chain will need to link closely to
one or both of these systems. For example, NBC has entered the market for e-books
using the leverage provided by pictures and video, but confronts the
platform/device problem and its lack of access to content authoring. Publishers
enter the market with the most established system of distributed content authoring
and selling e-books for about the same price as physical books, hoping to leverage
legacy assets but confronting problems of cannibalizing existing resources and the
negative consequences of disruptive innovation forces. Other potential players,
such as Facebook and Twitter, bring important assets to the value chain and will
have the least difficulty integrating into a digital system. In the end, the winners in
this process will be those who are able to develop the most compelling content and
deliver it in the most flexible manner. In this competitive environment, liberal arts
colleges and most liberal arts faculty largely do not realize they are potentially key
players, with much to gain from being in the process and even more to lose from
being left out.

Liberal arts colleges have an important opportunity to leverage the best
content and the best teaching but be unable to act on this advantage, with
potentially serious consequences. This is because of the tightly coupled relationship
between new digital educational materials and the development of online education.
First, these materials will make the case for a substantial online component for
education by creating activities that substantially enhance the capacity to promote
the goals of a liberal education: engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective, values-
clarifying, decision-making, information-evaluation learning. Locating these
materials in an online space will propel changes in education relating to time, space
and process that break with the 12th century model of education tied to agricultural
seasons and physical environments.

Second, the organization that creates educational materials will have a
competitive advantage in taking the lead in providing the education itself. The
initial point of disruptive innovation in the coming years is not the college or
university but at the level of creating digital educational materials themselves.
Other disruptions will flow from control over the creation and application of these
materials. Third, the greatest uncertainty is the source of these materials. Whether
faculty and others from liberal arts colleges will play a key role in the development
and even use of these materials is unclear. Only with substantial changes in attitude
and organization within liberal arts colleges, and based on the Pixar model, can this
happen. Much hinges on the actions of faculty and administrators.

We have had our “Bach” of the digital world in Steve Jobs; now we need a
Hayden, a Corelli, a Mozart and a Beethoven and hopefully some will be in liberal
arts colleges.

VII. Conclusions

There are many potential scenarios for future changes in higher education,
but very few believe in the option of remaining the same. Many forecasts see some
form of radical change, with disruptive innovation coming from online courses.
There are great risks in any pathway of change.60 Perhaps the direction of least
resistance is to aim for the lowest common denominator of the educational market.
This involves designing courses that substitute for the 500-student class common
across the nation. Unfortunately, and in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, few
advocates of this idea seem especially concerned about the low quality of the
existing lecture system in most universities (mass “education”) and readily envision
a simple porting of this system to the online world.61 At the same time, the demand
for low quality and low cost education should not be underestimated and many
existing and new institutions will be happy to provide it. A more expensive but
much higher quality alternative is to create digital educational materials for the
online world based on the educational principles of the liberal arts college but also
tailored to delivering pragmatic and demonstrable learning outcomes. In a
knowledge-intensive world, the ability to provide such an education for a
reasonable cost will likely generate considerable demand as well.

This paper outlines a plausible and perhaps likely direction for change: over
the next decade new organizational forms will emerge able to create exceptional
quality digital educational materials and use those to provide a reasonable cost but
compelling pragmatic education based on liberal arts principles. This system will
use some form of blended delivery and will provide a variety of options in time and
space for students, and will set the standard for education on a global scale.

But what happens if the faculty and administration of liberal arts colleges
don’t make the transition to a digital world by becoming central players in the
creation and use of digital educational media? If creation and use of these new
capabilities are bound together, then one option – becoming users and not creators
– is less viable. In a world where competitors are all alike except for branding,
faculty and institutions can pick and choose these roles with little consequence.
Today, virtually all content for university–level instruction comes from faculty

60 http://www.snhu.edu/online.aspx ; Stuart M. Butler, “The Coming Higher-Ed Revolution,” National
Affairs, 10 (Winter 2012) www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-coming-higher-ed-
revolution ; Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Liberal Arts at the Brink, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.
61 This is probably because the “low hanging fruit” are in the economies of scale of such an approach.

Often cited as a innovator, Khan Academy primarily follows this model.
http://www.khanacademy.org/ . There are many other examples of this approach. Also see Jeffrey
Young, “Sal Khan is Killing the Lecture,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2012, A11.

creators as established content experts. If and when this ends, or becomes
restricted to a tiny few faculty and institutions, liberal arts colleges may well be cut
out of any role in creating the radically different media needed for teaching and may
become reduced to the status of adjunct instruction. This outcome may be observed
in limited form at Southern New Hampshire University, where creators of digital
course content materials do not typically teach the courses. Instead, adjuncts do the
teaching, suggesting an interesting separation of tasks and differentiation of
status.62

Notwithstanding the marketing rhetoric, liberal arts colleges are not hotbeds
of flexibility and innovation. The rigidities and conservatism of organization and
mindset, also evident elsewhere, are perhaps even more deeply embedded in
institutions long accustomed to facing limited competition and employing people
with a lifetime contract. If IT departments in a distinguished liberal arts college
cannot see the value of providing faculty with an iPad to engage in experimentation
in creating digital media, how can we have any hope to see the dynamic
entrepreneurialism and innovation needed to traverse this new world? The real
truth is virtually no liberal arts colleges have a viable institutional strategy for
maneuvering in the new digital world.

Sadly, the most likely successful organizational outcomes of the new digital
educational world are outside of existing liberal arts colleges. This presages a future
for liberal arts colleges much like that followed by Kodak and many newspapers.
Surely some of the faculty of these institutions will participate in this process
through self-organized arrangements that do not depend on their college affiliation
– faculty start-ups are common in other technology-intensive settings63 - and the
best will migrate into the new digital education value chains. The great value they
bring with them are existing teaching skills and liberal arts values, but they will
almost surely need new organizational forms within which they create the new
digital pedagogy. Many students will also shift into an environment where
compelling content, flexibility, innovation, and demonstrable learning outcomes can
be found. In an environment of increasing competition and shrinking budgets for
traditional institutions, any existing flexibility and innovation will evaporate,
leading to a nearly inevitable death spiral for many (most?) institutions. There is
much room for a deep pessimism about the fate of the liberal arts college, except
perhaps as the victim of a hostile takeover by educational entrepreneurs and
financiers. The history of this coming period may well have a large dose of irony, as

62 http://www.snhu.edu/
63 And venture capital has recently surged into Edutech start-ups, specifically in higher education, a
field some see as ripe for disruptive (and destructive) innovation. Nick DeSantis, “A Boom Time for
Education Start-ups,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2012, A1, A15-16. Another
example is John Markoff, “Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Lures 5 Top
Universities,” New York Times, April 18, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/technology/coursera-plans-to-announce-university-
partners-for-online-classes.html?_r=1&hpw

the values of the liberal arts college live on in new institutions we cannot now
foresee.

Postscript

What would a liberal arts college do if it wanted to prove me wrong? Here
are four brief ideas.

First, adopt the Deng Xiaoping approach to creating change. This involves a form of
distributed, incremental experimentation: “crossing the river by feeling for stones.”

Second, adopt the Picasso approach to ideas: “Good artists borrow; great artists
steal.”
Third, adopt the recombinant approach to innovation: Mash-ups and more mash-
ups.

Fourth, create a semi-autonomous unit based on these three principles.

A “Pixar” Model for the Creation of Educational Materials in a Digital World– Paper

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A “Pixar” Model for the Creation of Educational Materials in a Digital World– Paper