Reimagining the Higher Education Experience as a Socially-Enabled Complex Adaptive System

Higher education faces challenges on many fronts, including new learning models such as MOOCs, new forms of credentialing that question the value of a diploma, and a generation of students raised on socially-enabled technologies that view creating and sharing information differently. Clearly change must occur, but existing siloed models are well-ingrained into the culture. In this paper, we use complex adaptive systems theory to go inside the “black box” of higher education to envision how socially-enabled technologies can transform processes, roles, and behaviors of key internal and external agents. We describe two new models: (1) Continuous Development, which places students in direct control of their own professional development and (2) Co-Creation, which makes students an integral part of knowledge generation and dissemination. We analyze the changes in traditional structures and interactions these models bring, and propose design principles that guide the design IT systems that enable these changes.