The series called “New Directions for Higher Education” will feature interviews with key visionaries by Philip DiSalvio, dean ...]]> The New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE) invites you to be part of a new series examining emerging issues, trends, innovations and ideas that will make a profound impact on higher education in New England and globally.

The series called “New Directions for Higher Education” will feature interviews with key visionaries by Philip DiSalvio, dean of the College of Advancing and Professional Studies at the University of Massachusetts.

We are seeking experts in their respective fields who would be interested in being interviewed by Dean DiSalvio for this new series of articles.

If you would like to participate, please send your contact information, a brief bio and topics on which you’re willing to speak, to me at jharney@nebhe.org.

Recently, NEJHE has featured the following about the transforming nature of higher education ...

University Unbound! Higher Education in the Age of "Free"

Innovators and entrepreneurs are using technologies to make freely available the things for which universities charge significant money. MOOCs ... free online courses ... lecture podcasts ... low-cost off-the-shelf general education courses ... online tutorials ... digital collections of open learning resources ... open badges ... all are disrupting higher education's hold on knowledge, instruction and credentialing. NEBHE convened more than 400 New England educators and opinion leaders in Boston in mid-October to discuss these new opportunities for students and challenges for traditional higher education institutions.

"University Unbound" Rebounds: Can MOOCs Educate as well as Train?

George McCully, founder of the Catalogue for Philanthropy, praises NEBHE's University Unbound conference, even wonders if it should become an annual event. But he worries that the massive open online courses (MOOCs) at the center of the discussion are better suited to training than to development "of personal values, life-experience, qualities of feeling (empathy, sympathy) sensitivity and insight, inspiration and aspiration, interest and concern."

No Stinkin' Badges? Mozilla's Erin Knight on "Open Badges" (Video)

Mozilla's Erin Knight speaks about her "Open Badges" work—an alternative credentialing system allowing learners to control their credentials and move away from seat time.

I Am Not a Machine

If all we have experienced in college classrooms is being lectured at, then Wikipedia, the Khan Academy and MOOCs should replace us, concedes Dan W. Butin, associate professor and founding dean of the school of education at Merrimack College, But Butin says he hopes "MOOCs will prompt us to refashion what we do in the college classroom and how we do it. For we all yearn for that 'dynamic, charismatic' teacher who can rock our world. We want our education to matter." Butin concludes, "MOOCs may indeed transform higher education, but they cannot transform my students."

Coming to Terms with MOOCs: A Community College Angle

Bunker Hill Community College President Mary L. Fifield explains how MOOCs and community colleges share common values. 

And Dean DiSalvio’s NEJHE articles on:

Pardon the Disruption ... Innovation Changes How We Think About Higher Education

Ventures such as edX, Coursera and Udacity may be catalysts that displace established ways of thinking about higher education institutions. How these innovations could move higher ed from an "instruction paradigm" to a "learning paradigm."

Shifting Landscapes, Changing Assumptions Reshape Higher Ed 

MIT and Harvard's collaboration to offer online courses free of charge points to something much deeper within the higher education fabric. A convergence of forces driving change in higher education is forcing us to ponder such fundamental questions as what a university is, what a course is, what a student is and what is the meaning of a college credential.

Degrees of Durability and the New World of Credentialing

Is the "college degree" an artifact ... an outdated higher education credential?

Bubble Wrap: Higher Ed and the Value Gap

There are many roads to an educated life, and higher education institutions may be the perfect incubators for non-degree credentialing and expanded learning options.

Will MITx Change How We Think About Higher Education? 

MITx is lowering the existing barriers between residential campuses and the millions of learners around the world by making MIT educational content accessible and providing those learners with an opportunity to earn an MIT-related credential.