elinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
Michael Staton wants to change education.
As the founder of Inigral, which makes technology to help students succeed, Staton has a unique approach to the structure of education.
According to a video on his blog, www.edumorphology.com, Staton said, “Let’s not even discuss the untold billions of dollars that are going into physical campuses that are going to be increasingly irrelevant in an information based world.”
Staton champions the benefits of online learning. A diagram titled “Unbundling Education, Replacing Services, One Fragment at a Time,” read, “Online, students have access to more engaging and entertaining content and instructors with more authority and expertise.”
CMU President Tim Foster met Staton at a recent conference in Washington D.C. called “Stretching the Higher Education Dollar.”
“He lit some of my colleagues on fire,” Foster said referring to the overall response to some of Staton’s ideals. “(Staton) is a little prone to overstatement.”
While Staton wants to see college and university services transfer from a physical to an online setting, he acknowledges that the Internet cannot do everything a physical school can.
Staton’s diagram also said, “The internal transformation may be hard to achieve online, but may be possible through alternative in-person programs.”
“The research tells you that hybrid models work best,” Foster said, citing CMU’s various classes with both online and classroom aspects. Foster also acknowledged some of the drawbacks to traditional by-the-book lecture classes, which Staton said “spoon-feeds” knowledge to students, but doesn’t actively involve them in the information.
“When I went to college, that’s what you did,” Foster said. “You’ve got this guy up there lecturing from the same notes for 20 years.”
Foster acknowledged the value of Staton’s ideas.
“He’s young, and he’s smart,” Foster said. “I want to bring him to campus. He will shake up the university culture. He will develop something we can use [and something that] students can use.”
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