During the 1990s we saw an explosion of the information economy, and what may be the beginning of a move away from dominance of education by government, to dominance by business. Not only has business established its own research programs for the production of new knowledge, it has also increased its efforts in the dissemination of that knowledge, through establishment of teaching institutions such as the McDonald's Hamburger University, the American Express Quality University, the Disney University, the MasterCard University and the Xerox Document University to name a few.
The recent mergers of giant telephone companies, computer companies, television companies, wireless services, information and entertainment industries, has also created new 'megamedia' industries, the majority of whom see education as the biggest potential market. One such cablevision company, Jones International established the Mind Extension University: The Education Network in 1987, and offers distance educations courses which have enabled hundreds of students to qualify for degrees from George Washington University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Arizona (Maney, 1995).
How has higher education responded to increased external competition in all aspects of its work? Some believe that higher education is blissfully unaware of these changes: "There seems to have been little curiosity about the changing character of the society of which they (universities) are part, and about their own changing functions in the social and in the wider intellectual life of the community" (Aulich Report, 1990). It is difficult not to be aware however, of attempts by universities to utilise the promised potential of information technologies in teaching, learning, research and administration. However, most institutions have adopted a cottage-industry approach to the use of technology, providing very small grants to already over-worked academics, without providing the level of infrastructure and support necessary for successful innovation, and then wondering why the promised large-scale improvements in teaching and learning have not been realised.
If universities are serious about utilising technology for learning and teaching, they must provide adequate funding for project development, access to scholars in teaching and learning in the context of higher education, access to academics who are not only content experts, but who also understand the ways in which students understand and learn that content, and access to appropriate technological expertise and resources. It is only with this level of support, that education has a chance of effectively utilising new technologies to improve learning and teaching by providing learning experiences that have not previously been possible, rather than just repackage old teaching methods.
So what is the future promised for higher education? A future where universities license their existing courses to megamedia companies in order to pay the salaries of their staff and equip libraries? A future where students pay fees to FoxTel or OptusVision for the pleasure of watching replayed videotapes of lectures via cable television? Or a future where the focus of course development is not only on content, but where current research on learning is combined with technology to enable large-scale changes in what and how our students learn?
Shirley Alexander is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Interactive Multimedia at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research relates to what we know about student learning in higher education and evaluation methodologies for multimedia programs.
