The Cafe and the Education Revolution

Greetings from the just opened TASA Cafe in the sport building at the Australian National University in Canberra. TASA adds Philippine cuisine to the selections on campus. I am having the pulled pork with coleslaw on a bun. More importantly, it is just across the road from my office in the school of computing. The campus cafes have an important role for informal discussions.

Already I have scheduled a meeting on exemptions and credit for recognition prior learning and experience, in the cafe. Granting students credit for what they did somewhere else is something academics are reluctant to do. This is partly out of a concern for standards, but also because it is not something part of academic training. Some of this is relatively simple: a course in discrete mathematics is much the same in Sydney or Shenzhen. However, soft skills are another matter: a course where students work in a team is not the same as one where they just read books about working in a team. Is work experience at a computer company in another country equivalent to Australia?

Australian Universities Were Already Past The Online Tipping Point Before COVID-19

Vector Consulting report on a survey of Australian universities and TAFEs in "The Tipping Point for Digitisation of Education Campuses" (26 November 2020). The study was commissioned by telecommunications companies Cisco and Optus, so it is not surprisingly upbeat about the prospects for the digitization of post-secondary education. But this is a well researched study and, if anything, it is not as pro-Internet some. The study suggests there will still be campuses, with classrooms, but these will be fully integrated with online facilities for research and education.

I called the E-Learning Tipping Point in 2017, as respected Australian universities started offering credit towards degrees for online learning. The Vector Consulting report argues that campuses are changing due to COVID-19, with  fewer people, more "experiential", promotion of "health" and space for industry partners. However, this was happening long before. Universities were replacing lecture theaters with flat floor flexible internet equipped classrooms. There were new entertainment, sport and dining facilities installed. Students were studying more online than on campus. 

An example of this new campus is ANU's Kambri development, opened in 2019, with flexible classrooms, reconfigurable lecture theaters, bars, a gym and swimming pool. The nearby computing building opened a few years before has offices for the Defence Department collocated.

The strategy the report recommends is to first get a secure digital platform, then apply a digital first strategy, apply campus master planning and make use of industry partnerships. The timescale proposed is 18 months, but I suggest any university which is not already doing these things is unlikely to be still in business in 18 months time.

It would be unwise to over-invest in one overall digital platform, as resilience comes from having multiple platforms and layers. At the extreme, a university doesn't need any campus, or any digital, infrastructure of its own, being able to use whatever the staff and students carry around in their pockets. In practice there are likely to be new infrastructure needed as technology and requirements change. Even if many staff still have offices, they may not need telephones, or computers on their desks.

Changing Role of the University Campus

Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide, has written a thoughtful two part series on the university campus. Professor Manmer argue sthat WWII was a turning point for universities, convincing governments, not just in the USA, to invest in big science on campuses. Post war new campuses were built on the fringes of Australian cities. Hanmer identifies a more recent trend of migration back to the city for universities. 

While interesting, I would have liked more on the post cold war era, the effect of changes in university enrollment as a factor and the Dawkins Revolution. New ideas of how students learn and changing our campuses, with the demise of the fixed tiered lecture theater, more flat floor high tech classrooms. Upscale accommodation, sport, and entertainment venues has made some campuses more like resorts, or malls, than centers of research and learning.

Also some of Australia's older universities are woven into the fabric of city centers, Oxbridge style. Adelaide has an interesting take on this, with the old stone Torrens Building, in the city center, rented out to multiple online universities to give them gravitas. 

Is a New Canberra Campus Needed?

UNSW Canberra at ADFA are planning a new university campus in Canberra, on the site of the old Canberra TAFE. The current UNSW Canberra campus is described as being "now at capacity". However, universities are currently teaching online, with almost all students and staff off campus. That situation will change in the next few months, as students and staff return to campus. But, the COVID19 emergency has accelerated the long term trend to e-learning.

As this is integrated into routine university teaching, the capacity of Canberra's university campuses will increase five-fold. Domestic students will only need to be on campus for about one day a week and international students in Australia only for a brief part of their studies, if at all. There is scope to repurpose some of the surplus space for research and for co-working, but even so, there is likely to be more than enough space on Canberra's campuses for the foreseeable future. 

It does make sense to reuse the old Canberra TAFE site for a university, but it is unlikely Canberra will have the hundreds of thousands of additional students which this, and the existing campuses, could accommodate. 

Effect of Educational Technology on Campus Needs

The ACT Government has commissioned the Australian National University (ANU) to estimate the number of students in Canberra's public schools in the next decade. This will take into account population growth, urban infill, and changes in preference for private versus public schools (the ANU is advertising for a demographer to work on this). However, another factor I suggest need to be taken into account is the use of technology in education. In the next ten years students will be predominately learning online. This will change the nature, and mix, of schools required, particularly for older students.

The assumption has been that students go to the same campus at fixed times, on fixed days, during a term. However, vocational education has already changed to a predominately on-line mode, and universities are in the middle of the same transition. This change will happen for older school students in the next ten years.

ANU Marie Reay
Teaching Centre

With a blended approach, students receive their learning materials online, with most assessment and routine administrative matters also handled online. Students study at home, or in a "learning center" (a library without books). Students undertake self organized group work, and may also attend some staff supervised workshop activities. However, there are few, if any, old fashioned classes with a teacher giving presentations. Last week I detailed how I am using this approach in the Australian National University's new Marie Reay Teaching Centre.

The change in teaching technique changes the design and mix of campus buildings needed. More informal learning space is needed, for individual and group work. Fewer lecture halls are needed, and almost no "classrooms". Rather than one large campus, an institution can have multiple small satellite campuses. These campuses can be shared between institutions, and be collocated with public facilities

As the ACT has one less level of government, it is much easier to combine school facilities with other educational and public functions. An example is Gungahlin College, which shares a building with the ACT Library and Canberra Institute of Technology. However, this could be taken further, with learning facilities shared more widely.

Call for University to Establish in Western Sydney

Blacktown Council in Sydney's West has invited universities to set up a 5,000 student campus, expanding to 30,000 students. Their business  case argues a strong market demand for study in Sydney, good transport, businesses wanting to partner on logistics, manufacturing, engineering, IT, sport and medicine.

What the Council has not mentioned is the availability of existing buildings, suitable for conversion to a campus.  Universities no longer require large purpose built lecture theaters. What would be ideal is an old shopping mall, with adjacent cinema complex and office tower.

Also required are suitable professionals, who can be trained to teach, and a lifestyle suitable for attracting a few academics. A university campus only needs a handful of full time research orientated academics. What is required is a large supply of part time teachers who are already qualified in the discipline they are teaching.

What is not clear is how large the Council expects the campus to be. With students mostly studying on-line, a university only needs to accommodate about one fifth of the enrolled students at any one time. Also students are increasingly part-time. As a result a university campus accommodating 30,000 students suggests the actual number of students enrolled to be about 150,000.

I will be discussing Learning to use new  tech-infused teaching spaces, at EduBuild Asia 2018 in Singapore 10 October.

Australian University Campuses Are Not Too Large

In "Rise of the monster campus devouring uni communities" (The Australian, 18 April 2018), Geoff Hanmer, Managing Director of ARINA suggests the ideal university campus has 10,000 to 20,000 students. He cautions Australia has too many large campuses and points out the average US four-year college has less than 5,000 students, whereas the median for Australian universities is over 20,000.

I agree that large university campuses can be overwhelming.  But where the university blends with the city, as it does in Oxford, Cambridge, Melbourne and Canberra, a large university can add to a vibrant urban culture.

Australia doesn't have many small US style colleges, as government regulations and international market don't encourage them. The regulations make it difficult to set up a non-university tertiary institution and the market makes it hard to sell such an institution to an international market.

Hanmer points out that smaller campuses have higher Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) scores. However, universities use their research ranking to market to students and those rankings favor the large institutions. Students are not very interested in teaching quality when looking for an institution. After enrolling and discovering that a research reputation doesn't equate good teaching, it is too late to change.


In any case, the move to on-line education is resulting in student numbers being decoupled from campus size. My rule of thumb is that the average student needs to do 20% of their studies on campus. A university with one campus can have 50,000 to 100,000 full time equivalent students enrolled and still be in Hanmer's "sweet spot". Only one fifth of these students would be on campus at the same time.

It should be noted that one of Australia's largest universities already has 60,000 students and no campus. This is the Open Universities Australia on-line consortium of institutions.