Living in a Modular World: The Modular University

At MIT, physics courses are abandoning the huge amphitheatre lectures, in favour of a modular, student-centered approach.

M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.

At a growing number of universities starting with Virginia Tech, the modular approach to teaching mathematics pre-requisites for engineers has caught on.

"A typical math emporium session consists of logging into a computer, then logging into the testing system to take a quiz or exam," said Terri Bourdon, the instructor who manages both the college algebra and trigonometry course and the differential calculus course. Many students also do their course work at the emporium. They log onto the computer and click the link for their course on the emporium homepage. Students can take practice quizzes to prepare for the graded quizzes, and Bourdon said "most of the questions that the emporium staff answers come from the practice quizzes."

A modular design for course work is ideal for much of physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering -- areas where North American universities are underachieving in terms of graduates vs. need. Taking the student out of a large amphitheatre lecture environment and incorporating lesson materials into modules a student can pursue at his own pace, the brick and mortar university is slowly giving way to the de-centralised university.

Already, Harvard Extension is offering degree programs obtainable online by students anywhere in the circum-Terra environment. MIT has been placing a growing amount of course material online for years. Dozens of other top universities are likewise offering credit for courses and extension degrees over the internet and via other distance education approaches.

Theoretically, a student living on a lunar colony could obtain a Harvard degree without ever leaving the surface of the moon. Over time, the number of degrees obtainable will continue to increase. There is no reason that law schools could not offer accredited degree programs anywhere in the world, given adequate online law libraries. As lab methods are adapted for virtual reality, and realistic simulators are made more affordable for regional and local distribution, even dental and medical training will be made available to the most distant outposts of human habitation.

We need to stop thinking in terms of huge centralised institutions of education and government, and begin thinking in terms of modular, de-centralised methods of training and administration.

The US government is currently under the complete control of the obsolete hyper-centralists, the neo-Keynesian monolithologists who worship at the feet of the god of hyper-bureaucracy. The resulting decay, corruption, ruin, and hardship will be most memorable for decades, if not centuries. Government (and universities) should never have been allowed to grow so large or powerful. Time to begin the great dismantling and re-ordering, even if the early phases must fly mainly under the radar.

The above video illustrates how quickly a local or regional educational startup could build a "branch campus" which might contract with multiple universities or departments such as Yale Law, Harvard Medical, MIT, Stanford Engineering, U Dub Neuroscience, etc. A modest investment in infrastructure, telecom, VR equipment, and realistic simulation modules would allow a small investment group to finance a credible distance education center offering the best education available on any continent.