The simplest way that I have seen to define disruptive innovation was from Clayton Christensen’s video presentation in which he stated, “what it means to be disruptive is you transform something that used to be complicated and expensive so that only a few people had access to it, and now you make it so affordable and accessible that a whole new population of people now have access” (2014a). In the case of education – and particularly higher education – students no longer need to be limited in their educational opportunities. Scott Cook (Clayton Christensen Institute, 2014b) compared education to the entertainment industry which used to be geographically-based and limited a person’s ability to listen to live music or view other forms of entertainment. People used to need to travel great distances at great expense to see world class entertainers. In Cook’s conversation with Christensen, he states, “one form of profound disruption is to take what’s remote and/or costly and make it highly accessible and cheap – suddenly opening up the world’s best entertainers to the world” (2014b). Cook continues his comparison by indicating that a student is no longer limited to the best math teacher in their hometown or in their local school district; students can now access the world’s best math teacher (referring to Sal Khan) from anywhere in the world.

Providing ubiquitous access to a world-class education within a blended learning environment is a significant disruptive innovation. Instead of relying solely on online classes or solely on a traditional classroom environment, creating a blended environment seems to offer the best of both worlds by providing exactly what students need when they need it. As Michael Horn stated in his presentation, “every student has different learning needs at different times” (Edmentum, 2013a), and it is technology that helps enable this. The traditional classroom has been studied and transformed for decades, but it is technology that opens the pathways forward in a blended environment. Technology is what can remove the geographical limitations of a traditional learning environment.

In my organization, I have the opportunity to see lots of blended models at work, but most faculty rely on the rotation model described by Horn (Edmentum, 2013b). The faculty who use a blended model most successfully use either the individual rotation or the flipped-classroom approach. However, the approach that seems to most intriguing is the flex approach which is described by Horn as using an online platform for all the primary course delivery, and each student has an individualized program of learning. Teachers would then meet with students for specific, just-in-time instruction or tutoring as needed. While the flex model seems intriguing, I question whether a traditional higher-education organization can implement this type of blended instruction model since there is such a focus on Carnegie Units and seat time.

One of the most noticeable opportunities for innovation in my organization is probably related to ePortfolios. Currently, our institution does not provide anything other than the incredibly limited portfolio available in the Canvas LMS, and that is not capable of traveling with the student beyond their time at our organization. We provide WordPress sites for faculty, but we don’t allow students to easily create their own WordPress sites within our organization. We also don’t have any simple-to-use ePortfolio software tools or systems available campus-wide. Perhaps expanding our institution’s options for ePortfolios could open the door for our students to take ownership of and showcase their work in an entirely new way.

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