Thomas D. Lairson, Gelbman Professor of International Business and Professor of Political Science, Rollins College Developing innovative digital education materials, incorporating all of the engaging value that digitization can offer and promoting complex analytical, and intellectual sensibilities in students are unlikely without significant conceptual and organizational changes. This paper develops the “Pixar” model, based on the disruptive innovation practices of Steve Jobs, to describe these changes and how they relate to the existing educational environment. An example of innovative digital materials, based on U.S.-China relations, is elaborated and related to the Pixar model.

2.  Online/blended education requires compelling digital educational media
 Great digital media will revolutionize pedagogy and education by delivering the
highest aspirations of liberal arts education in a flexible and highly individualized
setting at a much lower cost
 New educational system can and should be based on liberal arts college faculty.
 For this to happen, faculty will need to be different, work with different kinds of
technologists, and the organization for both will need to change dramatically.
 Liberal arts colleges probably cannot make the strategic commitment to digital
media creation and the disruptive innovation needed to make this happen.
 New organizational forms will emerge outside of liberal arts colleges to create new
digital media and new pedagogy.

3.  Analysis based on Pixar model – Apple and Steve Jobs
 Consider best practices in digital educational media to
show us directions
 Describe digital media for US-China relations course
 What do liberal arts colleges need to do? Pixar model for
liberal arts colleges
 Examine business models from digital business in order to
develop liberal arts colleges for the near future.

4.  Break existing product and business model molds –
Computer-generated animated movies, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad,
Apple Store, App Store, iTunes
 Integrate hardware and software
 Intersection of content – art - and technology
 Obsession with quality
 Leveraging distributed knowledge creation capabilities
 Exploit low marginal cost of a digital content

5.  The “gold standard” for business models in a digital world
 Close connection between the device and the content
 Creators of digital media need to be users
 Creators-users will redefine pedagogy and the “classroom”
 New kinds of faculty - sophisticated content knowledge
and technical understanding
 New organizational forms
 Inkling, Apple, Facebook, Phoenix, Knewton, NHN,
Moonbot

6.  Natural competitive advantage: gold standard for content
and pedagogy
 engaged, interactive, analytical, perspective, values clarifying,
decision-making, information-evaluation learning
 Strong resistance to online education and technology
 Anti-entrepreneurial and anti-innovation
 Most faculty have no idea the threat posed by the digital
world

7.  Alliance of strong and very innovative administrative
leadership with faculty leaders having a clear vision to
leverage the values and skills of a liberal arts
environment?
 Liberal arts colleges and faculty will need to disrupt
themselves
 IBM, Xerox, Kodak
Will liberal arts faculty 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?

8.  Individualized configurations of content provided on demand or even
through adaptive responses (Knewton)
 Interactive text, hypertext, semantic web, pictures, video, music,
animations, simulations and immersive environments
 Encourage and enhance face-to-face interaction between teacher and
student
 Enhance the ability to absorb and process information, analyze,
compute, evaluate, innovate and decide

9.  Scalar - a software environment integrating text and multiple sources of video and images.
 Processing - software environment for creating images, animations and interactions.
 Unfolding - Software environment for creating interactive maps and data visualization.
 Tile Mill - Software for creating GIS-based maps
 Gelph – interactive platform for the visualization and analysis of data.
 Twine - Software for creating interactive stories.
 Celtx - software environment for managing and developing digital media.
 JUNG - software environment for modeling, analysis and visualization of data.
 Vue - a “visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.”
 Popcorn - Software for linking web and video.
 Sophie - Sophie is software for reading and writing interactive books and other forms of text and multimedia.

10.  Ubuweb–
 Archive of films and audio works
 USC School of Cinematic Arts: Walden, A Game –
 A virtual simulation of the Walden experiment by Thoreau.
 Hypercities– geospatial humanities
 permits a deep and detailed examination of cities through time with layered GIS maps.
 OmnesViae–
 Interactive map with embedded information about travel in the 4th century Roman World
 Mastering Biology –
 Integrated system of interactive content, learning modules, testing and real time
feedback, and data stream to faculty

11.  GIS-3D animation program at Washington College run by Stewart
Bruce
 Courses for learning and creating advanced immersive digital content
 Based on outside grants
 Students as creators with practical job experience
 Computer simulation program by Dr. Forrest Stonedahl at Centre
College
 Computer simulations to examine social, environmental and natural
sciences
 To understand a social system you need to build it and analyze it
experimentally
 Powerful forms of experiential and interactive learning

12. What standards for these new digital learning media?
 Engagement and interactivity
 Factual and analytical information
 Expand the ability to locate, evaluate and apply information in realistic
scenarios
 Students formulate alternatives and analyze potential outcomes in
policy environments
 Social media for engaging in team-playing and sharing ideas
 “Testing” settings linked to adaptive responses to support learning
 Learning analytics using data from individual students, with data
aggregation across professor-defined groups of students.

13.  Model is mashup of video game, GIS-based and touch screen
interactive map, and computer simulation
 AI-based interactive 3D virtual environment and incorporating SIRI-
like input and response capabilities that asks and answers questions.
 Dynamically layered maps with embedded complex links to text and
multimedia information
 Embedded tests to enhance learning
 Two important issues in U.S.-China relations
 U.S.-China conflict over currency and trade
 U.S.-China-Vietnam conflict over South China Sea
 This new kind of map will serve as a reference point for developing
simulation environments of various forms of economic, political and
military interaction

16. Add dynamic layers and embedded links to data and text: about:
 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 production networks 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.

17.  Trade war prompted by declaring China a currency manipulator
 Layered maps with embedded text and data
 Exchange rate data
 Analysis of exchange rate effects on trade
 Case studies of trade wars
 Students choose and explain responses – simulation provides AI based
responses – students respond and explain
 Knowledge of economic relations and decision-making, evaluating
information, analysis of alternatives and outcomes
 Crisis in the South China Sea from China – Vietnam conflict
 Military conflict over oilfields
 Students play in teams
 Knowledge of positions, capabilities and responses of nations involved
 Explanation of choices
 Dynamically AI based interactions engage decision-making, evaluating
information, analysis of alternatives and outcomes

18. Wolf-Sheep-Grass in Netlogo

19.  Create new Pixar unit and support entrepreneurialism
 Strategic value of the Pixar unit for success/survival
 New kind of education creates its own demand
 Faculty-technologist collaboration - new rules/incentives
 Expand skills of technologists and faculty
 Students as content creators – interns and content
creations “courses”
 Accept trial and error process of change and development
 Pixar unit partners with Apple in digital value chain
 The competitive advantage of liberal arts colleges is an
approach to ideas, learning, thinking and education;
leverage this into the digital age

20.  Why will good digital educational materials change the way education
takes place?
 Provides the “killer app” by demonstrating online educational value is as
strong as cost is low
 Materials and educational process will co-evolve
 Course and curriculum are transformed
 Demonstrable educational competencies and capabilities
 Dynamically individualized process for critical thinking
 Superior educational outcomes
 High engagement and interactivity;
 Clarify values;
 Obtain, recombine and apply information;
 Solve problems - analyze alternatives, outcomes and consequences; work in teams;
develop perspective

21. Why will the organization that creates educational materials have a
competitive advantage in providing the education itself?
 Disruption will proceed when blended wins on cost and quality – when
digital media are really good
 Digital media will enhance flexibility in course and curriculum
 Linking creators and users in new organizations provides a competitive
advantage over separating creators and users – co-evolving content and
application
 The creation and application of digital media will drive multiple
disruptions in organization

22.  Liberal arts colleges could and should be leaders in the new
digital age
 Conservative forces in liberal arts colleges will win until it
is too late
 New organizational forms built around creation and
delivery of new digital media and new pedagogy will
emerge outside of existing liberal arts colleges
 Liberal arts values will survive even if colleges don’t

23.  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.