Distance Education in Transition - Master of Distance Education ...

The Pedagogical Flexibility of the Virtual University
specific academic administration. These are missing in those “virtual universities” which
are mere clearing houses. On the other hand, the traditional academic infrastructure is
also an impediment to the development of a real net-based learning system. Traditional
universities will be confronted with severe structural changes which are due to the
simple fact that face-to-face teaching and learning in real spaces on a campus and
distributed learning in virtual spaces are two entirely different things. It is evident that
both forms of learning and teaching develop learning and teaching behaviours and
administrative practices which differ considerably. The transformation referred to is a
very difficult and complex process. Unfortunately, this is not seen by many practitioners
and even by experts in the field. They still believe that the foremost task before them is
to replicate on the net traditional forms of academic teaching and learning and
administrative procedures.
� Macquarie University in Sydney
This university caters for 6 000 students in a broad range of subjects. It is one of those
Australian universities which have developed master plans in order to adapt their
institution to the tasks of the post-industrial information and knowledge society. Part of
their innovated structure is the integration of web-based learning.
According to Morton Flate Paulsen (2000, p. 59) this process of innovation proceeds on
three levels:
Level 1 Administrative information about the course, some course content, links to other
resources, e-mail contacts to staff for more information.
Level 2 Compulsory use of the web by all students, generally with a wider variety of
content, learning resources and interaction, later often virtual tutorials and
discussion forums (synchronous or a-synchronous).
Level 3 The course is essentially managed via the web, with a substantial proportion of
content, learning resources, and interaction provided this way.
So far the virtual part of the university offers 60 courses on the web which are studied
by 4 000 students. A characteristic feature of this virtual university is that they are still
experimenting with three versions of net-based learning: (1) “www plus paper”, (2) “all
on the web”, (3) “paper plus web”. The web is not only used to deliver written content
but also for interactivity, sound and video. Audio is in fact emphasised. Virtual tutoring
takes the form of “human, machine and group tutoring”. The ultimate goal is “a mature
and stable provision of university degrees via the WWW” (Paulsen, 2000, p. 63).
Virtual Distance Teaching Universities
When a conventional university and a distance teaching university transform into a virtual
university the result can never be the same. As the name indicates, distance teaching
universities have already established a tradition of distributed learning and of supporting
individual students continuously by means of regular assignments, counselling, tutoring,
and examinations. They have also developed strategies to cope with (extremely) large
numbers of students (mass higher education). When a university of this type goes virtual,
it is relatively easy to profit from these traditions, to integrate them and to develop
ambitious pedagogical net-based systems.
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