MOOC discussion at Rensselaer

Below is an email I sent today to a few Rensselaer faculty and staff. If you are one of my RPI friends, please consider pushing a few buttons on campus as well and please cut and paste from my diatribe if you like. The first MOOC I used was at Cal Berkeley as I was preparing to go back to RPI in late 2006.  It is astonishing that RPI was a national leader in distance education in the 80's and they are now so far behind.

To: president@rpi.edi; edop@poly.rpi.edu;

Subject: Don't forget alumni in the MOOC discussion

For many, Rensselaer's April 10th Colloquium on Teaching & Learning will be about the pedagogy of MOOCs. But for everyone associated with RPI, it should first be about Rensselaer's brand -- our reputation. Understanding why this topic has far-reaching strategic value to Rensselaer is more important than tactical implementation considerations. At the heart of that strategic value is understanding how to leverage Institute resources to engage the imaginations of alumni who can uniquely influence RPI's reputation.

Before we arrived on campus as students, faculty or staff, we chose to invest our skills and our time at RPI because of some positive association or affinity we each had previously developed for this great Institute. With some reflection, I bet each one of us could identify that positive influence. Perhaps it was a friend or relative that spoke highly of the schools educational rigor. Perhaps you highly regarded a distinguished researcher. Perhaps a trusted professional colleague had graduated from the school or was an employee. That feeling and influence is the foundation of RPI's brand. Upon that foundation, faculty, staff and alumni frame their professional lives.

Unlike most faculty, tens of thousands of RPI alumni will only have one university affiliation. When asked in a professional or personal context where we chose to spend our formative undergrad years, we will proudly exclaim RPI !  Most alumni hope that everyone who has been associated with RPI will enthusiastically promote this school. But realistically we all know that some will not. Faculty and staff have their own alma mater and may advance their careers elsewhere. Some alumni secretly regret attending Rensselaer for various reasons.

Regardless of your passion or your loyalty to Rensselaer, if Rensselaer is on your resume then YOU NEED the school's reputation to be of the highest caliber. YOU BENEFIT when people within your professional life associate Rensselaer with greatness. You need that positive reputation to spread and grow. YOU GAIN when corporate executives, entrepreneurs, members of the press, academics, industry leaders, government bureaucrats and millions of casual professional colleagues understand the value -- respect the brand -- of Rensselaer.

Learning is the core business of any school and Rensselaer is no different. Research is learning. Getting a degree is learning. Advancing your professional life requires continuous learning. It is only in the most simplistic view that online course content could be viewed solely as a tool to help professors deliver content to students enrolled at RPI. A long pedagogical discussion about "residential students", "assessment", "asynchronous interactivity", etc etc fails to acknowledge reality. The Colloquium first needs to consider how to maintain relevant contact with 90,000 influential alumni.

Alumni represent the greatest collective power to influence the reputation of the school. We are the ones who can most effectively tell our friends, family and millions of professional associates about the great achievements being made at RPI and the value of an RPI affiliation. In the absence of RPI online content, RPI alumni will seek out content from other great schools such as those shaping Coursera and edX. Alumni can drive more prospective grants and dollars to the school or we can deliver those dollars elsewhere. It is a fiduciary responsibility of the Trustees to ensure that the Institute employees are sustaining and growing the reputation of Rensselaer. As a direct consequence, the Institute employees should be focused on delivering quality learning to both current students and alumni. Any business that disregards their existing customers will wither against competitive forces. Alumni are established customers. Without a proactively engaged alumni, RPI will wither.

If you are a distinguished or emerging academic at Rensselaer, I would imagine you want to attract industry funding and grants from governments and private foundations.  You probably want the most talented and creative grad-school candidates. Symmetrically, those same individuals and institutions want to work with the best possible researchers. Think of an online course as one of your tools for attracting unsolicited research projects and inspired students.

The Rensselaer faculty MUST begin this year to deliver openly available content or you force 90,000 graduates to look elsewhere for their intellectual curiosity and casual professional development. This is an issue of basic marketing -- maintain the loyalty of your existing customers so they become a source of future revenue. You will not find an easier group of people to attract to the RPI website. Many alumni are puzzled by the absence of content available from RPI. We look to innovative content projects such as edX and Coursera and feel disappointed and embarrassed that RPI is not represented. We search in vain on the RPI website for similar intellectually engaging content.

Please, do not ignore the influence of Rensselaer alumni.