Clayton Christensen Institute – The Health Care Blog

Three Recommendations for President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative

Jan 26, 2015• 5

By SPENCER NAM

One of the pleasantly surprising announcements President Obama made during his 2015 State of the Union address was “a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes.”

Given precision medicine’s potential to solve many outstanding health care issues and lower costs without compromising clinical quality and performance, the President’s proposal is a welcome initiative. Many of the challenges we face practicing symptom-focused intuitive medicine could be overcome by turning toward precision medicine, a process of precisely diagnosing and targeting disease.

However, announcing the initiative is one thing. As with all policy discussions, the devil is in the details – and there are three details specifically that could make the difference between political rhetoric and a policy that truly improves the health of American citizens.Continue reading…

MOOCs Ain’t Over. Till They’re Over …

Jan 24, 2014• 1

By Michelle R. Weise

Over the last month, journal headlines have been heralding the death of massive online open courses (MOOCs). You could almost hear the sigh of relief from the academy. With Sebastian Thrun himself acknowledging the “lousy” quality of the MOOC product, told-you-so skeptics have been giddily pointing out that Udacity, in its failure to disrupt higher education, is now moving on to vocational training.

Sadly, what audiences are missing is that Thrun’s shift to workforce training is precisely what has the potential to disrupt and severely impact traditional postsecondary education. We at the Christensen Institute have already written extensively about how MOOCs were not displaying the right markers for disruption (see here, here, here, and here), but we became more hopeful as they started to offer clusters of courses. Coursera announced Foundations of Business with Wharton, while edX and MITX introduced the Xseries in Computer Science as well as Supply Chain & Logistics.

These moves appeared to map better to employer needs and what we describe as areas of nonconsumption. In their turn away from career-oriented training, colleges and universities have unwittingly left unattended a niche of nonconsumers—people over-served by traditional forms of higher education, underprepared for the workforce, and seeking lifelong learning pathways.

What most people forget when they bandy about the term “disruptive innovation” is that disruptive innovations must find their footholds in nonconsumption. McKinsey analysts estimate that the number of skillsets needed in the workforce has increased rapidly from 178 in September 2009 to 924 in June 2012. Unfortunately, most traditional institutions have not adapted to this surge in demand of skillsets, and as a result, the gap has widened between degree-holders and the jobs available today.

An Epic Fail for Massive Open Online Courses?

Jan 1, 2014• 2

By MICHAEL B. HORN

Coursera, the popular massive open online course (MOOC) platform, intrigues. With over 5 million students served and $85 million raised—both numbers are first among the “MOOC platforms”—it’s the type of company that captures the imagination of people in Silicon Valley who dream of transforming sectors.

Its reach and emerging focus on K–12 professional development were prime reasons that we at the Clayton Christensen Institute, along with the Silicon Schools Fund and the New Teacher Center, recently offered a MOOC on blended learning through Coursera.

But Coursera has always given me reason to pause as well. It’s never felt to me like its initial incarnation could possibly disrupt higher education. Why? As I’ve told its team, offering courses from the top universities online and claiming that at last, anyone anywhere can access the best learning in the world isn’t correct.

The reason is that the top universities do not offer the best teaching and learning experiences. Instead, their faculty members are incentivized heavily to focus on research at the expense of teaching. If a professor seeking tenure at one of these institutions receives a teaching award, it is often said that that professor has just received the kiss of death for her tenure hopes. If students learn at these institutions, it’s often not because the teaching is so good, but because the students are so talented that they can absorb anything thrown at them (and it’s worth noting that just because a professor is entertaining, does not mean it’s a good learning experience).

Putting these courses online often makes them worse. Not only do professors not know how to teach well in person, but also their lack of understanding of the basic principles of sound learning design causes them to exacerbate these problems as they put these experiences online, which can become more problematic as students from all walks of life with many different learning needs are now theoretically able to take these courses.