Adaptation in Higher Education

Higher education needs to change.

Nearly every person, both inside and outside of the academic world, would agree. The issue is what should that change look like?

Herein lies one of the core concepts of this project: true adaptation.

First, let’s build a clear definition, followed by some present opportunities to bring this idea to life.

Whether a student takes a course online (informal setting) or in a brick and mortar setting (formal setting), they can expect to engage with the same, familiar types of assignments such as quizzes, tests, short writing projects, and similar assessments. Basecamp founder and author Jason Fried (2020) calls this method “porting”.Porting occurs when professionals, such as educators, simply move items from one platform to another without appropriately adapting or redesigning them for the new platform. This lack of adaptation could be another cause of our focus problem. Online learning is not just an alternative medium for current educational practices, it is a distinct platform that warrants the adaptation and creation of native assessment measures. — David Ramos, excerpt from M.Ed. capstone

Mediums versus Platforms

The above quote introduces the difference between medium and platform, which is essential to our conversation of adaptation.

A medium is the delivery mechanism. A television commercial was made to be shown, to communicate visually. But the audio can…