The Opportunity in Higher Education: How Open Education and Peer-To-Peer Networks are Essential for Higher Education

Abstract

The university's role in the nation's economy is to increase its ability to transfer research to industry, generate new inventions and patents, and spin-off its technology in the form of startup companies. As such, there has been a movement in the USA and around the world to make universities ‘engines of innovation’, and to enhance their ability to commercialize their research. In accordance with these principles, the idea of open learning innovation in the peer-to-peer system of higher education has been put into the forefront of economic, social, and cultural creative concepts. Open learning and open innovation provide educators and administrators in the peer-to-peer networks, which provides the ability for them to take a step back and view the educational process through the lens of the creative economy. There is growing momentum to embrace open innovation and the necessity to use peer-to-peer networks for educational institutions. The author contends that open education along with peer-to-peer networking is the new direction for higher education; otherwise, higher education could face the possibility of disengaging new generations of students and problems could exist in higher education.