James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation, thinks the myth that universities are slow to embrace change and edtech companies are always agile is limiting the collective potential of the wide range of actors seeking positive change in higher education. He believes that examining the difference between partnerships and vendor relationships is the key to moving past this paradigm and establishing successful university-edtech collaborations. He writes: Strong partnerships, unlike more transactional vendor relationships, require deep understanding of values. Just as universities seek to understand new kinds of edtech partners, new edtech partners should seek to understand the complexity of universities that are at one and the same time powerfully conservative embodiments of cultural heritage and massively disruptive creators of new ideas, technologies and forms of expression. When thinking about pace we can’t think in binary terms. Edtech partners aren’t always fast and universities slow. It depends and sometimes we reverse roles. But only in a strong partnership do we have the mechanisms to maintain focus in our collaboration and flexibility to allow our respective strengths come to the surface in the form of benefits to learners and society.
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