Exclusive Interview with Dr. Mark Nichols, Executive Director Learning Design & Development, Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Dr. Mark Nichols, Executive Director, Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Dr. Saba: You have many years of experience in leading and managing distance education organizations. What attracted you to the field?
Dr. Nichols: Initially the attraction was intuitive. I started writing course booklets for my students in my very first teaching job, straight out of management school. I enjoyed it, and was soon appointed to a lecturing role at about the time the www began to be noticed (mid 1990s). From there, things became a little more serendipitous. Professor Phil Race, a renowned expert of adult education in the UK, visited Wellington, New Zealand in the late 1990s to do a workshop on instructional design, which I attended. I was under some pressure at the time to do Masters study, and I didn’t want to do further management study. So I asked Phil if he knew of any Masters options that focussed on instructional design. He mentioned a new programme at the Open University, the MA in Open and Distance Education. I had not heard of the OU and was totally unfamiliar with distance education, but my employer agreed to help fund my studies.
The MAODE was totally life changing. I studied at an other-side-of-the-world distance in the last years of the 1990s, using the eBBS (bulletin board) system designed at the OU. I have never doubted the efficacy or potential of distance education since that date. I was fortunate that the MAODE at that time was choc-full of distance education theory. Online education literature was just starting to emerge. I graduated in 2001 at 3am New Zealand time, attending the virtual ceremony in my pyjamas with my wife and in-laws (also in pyjamas)! I recently worked for the Open University as Director of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), which was a real privilege.
I have been involved in distance, flexible, open, online education across multiple roles over the last 20 years. One of my most formative experiences was my three years with Laidlaw College, where I had the opportunity to fill multiple roles:Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) administrator, course designer, tutor, tutor trainer, process designer. I learned to appreciate DE operations from multiple perspectives – and each career shift has led to more responsibility. To be honest my career has largely been one of accident than design!
Dr. Saba: In your various positions what has been some of the most challenging issues?
Dr. Nichols: I think the biggest challenge is how badly distance education is misunderstood. Online education isn’t something new; it’s a natural extension of classic DE theory. It’s also far from a second-rate activity. DE can be – and ought to be – every bit as effective than on-campus education in terms of student outcomes and academic achievement. Where that’s not the case, odds are that DE is being practiced poorly. DE is difficult to do well, and it takes what Michael G Moore and Greg Kearsley identified in 1996 as a ‘systems approach’. In other words, it’s not enough to just offer some courses at a distance. The entire organisation needs to be oriented around and dedicated to the success of the distance student. DE done poorly does not reflect a systems approach.
Across my managerial and executive responsibilities another large challenge has been managing role
I think the biggest challenge is how badly distance education is misunderstood.
Another great challenge is the sloppy use of terminology evident across the field. ‘Open’, ‘flexible’, ‘online’ tend to be relative terms, for example, yet are often applied in absolute or personal terms. But that’s a whole other rant…
Dr. Saba: You are currently writing a book about these challenges. Would you please tell us why you embarked upon writing this book?
Dr. Nichols: I’m writing the book (working title Transforming universities for digital distance education) because I don’t think universities are taking the legitimate needs of the contemporary learner, or the educational expectations of contemporary society, seriously enough. It’s not about dumbing down education, diploma-mill practice or censure of the academic. It’s about genuinely making education more accessible, scalable and personalised through the use of digital technologies. The book suggests a model for DDE – digital distance education – that provides students with much more flexibility, support and convenience, without in any way compromising the value of the education they expect and that academics work so hard to protect.
Most universities are far from student-centred practice, as their operating models tend to be based on a supply-side, compliance-driven approach to education. This is why I don’t think we’ve seen online learning truly deliver on its potential; it’s caught up in a semester-driven, lecture-centric and technologically conservative environment. In the book I’m cautious to position myself as someone who is educationally-driven, pedagogically-centred and student-oriented – there’s no reason why these three need to be somehow viewed as in tension – and definitively not technocentric. I also try to inject a way of thinking about education that genuinely liberates practice, at least from the perspective of the student, while still encouraging study in cohort groups.
Ultimately the book is an expression of enlightened, ‘let’s do it better’ frustration, informed by twenty years of research-fuelled practice that includes ten years of senior management!
Dr. Saba: What are some of the highlights of the book? What makes it different than the current literature on management and leadership of distance education organizations?
Dr. Nichols: There are three main highlights from my perspective: the context for change, the DDE model, and the final chapter discussing operating models.
As mentioned above I’ve taken pains to appreciatively talk about what universities achieve. Their mission is to educate, which is arguably the most important function in any society. I place education on a pedestal throughout the book, and I purposefully differentiate it from learning. In the Introduction chapter I also point out just why online education is yet to make a serious difference in how universities do things. Why are we still wedded to semesters, and why do the costs of education just keep increasing? Understanding these issues sets an important foundation for the DDE model.
The model itself is wonderfully simple, but perhaps not intuitive. Its eleven principles span technology, pedagogy and management… that’s all I think I ought to say for now! Critically, there is nothing in the model that is in any way experimental; the model provides a way of thinking about digital distance education as a holistic activity. The model is informed by years of practice and change management (not all of it successful I admit) across my career, with a broad understanding of evidence-based practice and literature (including that sourced from the Open University ). The DDE model also seeks to embed learning analytics and weak AI into education practice. I’m excited to be at Open Polytechnic in New Zealand at the moment, because we’re actively involved in building the DDE and are seeing its benefits.
The final chapter is arguably the most controversial and, from this author’s viewpoint, the most risky. We are generally not used to considering universities as institutions, nor as collections of processes that work together, but that is ultimately how they function. If the students of any university are going to seriously benefit from the accessibility, scalability and personalised potential of online education, ways of working and processes need to be redesigned. The final chapter is where managerialism comes to the fore, but my hope is that by the time the reader has reached that point the purpose of process mapping is crystal clear and nestled safe in the knowledge that the driving force is effective education.
Dr. Saba: With these issues on hand how do you see the future of higher education in general and distance education in particular?
Dr. Nichols: It is going to take considerable courage for a university to adopt the DDE, though I do suggest an easier path in the book than radical upheaval! Ultimately I’m optimistic about the DDE; I think there’s a certain inevitability to the model and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see new universities designed along the lines suggested in the book. Eventually the sort of accessibility, scalability and personalisation the DDE is concerned with will be just the way things are done. If academics read the book carefully they’ll see significant potential for themselves, too.
More broadly, I think the future of higher education is at risk. There is a tendency to think about education in atomistic terms – just-in-time learning, micro-credentials, learning bites – which has the potential to undermine the real value of what education was originally designed to achieve. Education is not about adding knowledge to knowledge; it’s about enriching perspectives, and introducing new ways of thinking about and processing ideas. Education is about forming a relationship with a domain of knowledge, being conversant with its ideas. Education is an encounter, more than a collection. There’s a subtlety here that I think I succeed in describing much better in the book.
Distance education is, I’ll happily admit, central to my thinking and focus. I hope it gets a new lease of respect as a result of the book; I think digital distance education is a much better term than online education, for three reasons. First, DDE is a means of differentiating from print-based or correspondence forms of distance education. Second, not all digital education needs to be online… pedantic, I know, but offline and synchronisable digital options have a firm place in practice and so does print (for extended readings). Third, I like to think of digital distance education as an extension of DE – and therefore all of the richness of practice, theory and evidence since the foundational work of Wedemeyer, Moore, Peters and many others flows in to contemporary practice. Online education wasn’t invented fifteen years ago or by the founders of xMOOCs. The roots of effective digital education reach much deeper.
Dr. Mark Nichols, Executive Director, Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Drawing from his LinkedIn profile as at end 2019, Dr. Mark Nichols is a senior manager, leader and online and distance education professional with a valuable combination of experience across executive management, professional team leadership, change management, organisational design and research. PhD 2014; PFHEA 2017. Most recently, as of late 2019 he began a three-year term as an Honorary COL (Commonwealth of Learning) Adviser and in 2020 he will start a three-year term as a member of the ICDE Executive Committee.
His goals remain unchanged since 1995:
- Personal: To enjoy a rich life, to flourish in my chosen pursuits and to be known as a reliable, affirming, innovative and empowering person. To live a life inspired by Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection, not a judgemental, closed or frustrated life, but a vibrant, open and loving one.
- Professional: Serving strategically in education-related roles that require innovation based on sound research. Leading and being a part of a team of dynamic professionals who see education as a public good, and who are dedicated to transformational learning based on rich scholarship.
- Academic: To continuously broaden my perspectives in such a way that my practice is deepened, and my opinions useful to others at a variety of levels. ORCID
