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

The Transformation of the University Into an Institution of Independent Learning
In view of the difficulties referred to here, the deficiencies indicated, and of the
digitalisation processes that are already altering learning and teaching, it would appear
to be expedient to start considerations of whether, in their present form, with their
classical self-image and their traditional methods of teaching and learning, universities
are in any way in a position to impart these. If this question is answered negatively, we
are faced with the task of imagining how much university must change to cope with
new tasks and challenges. What is particularly interesting here is how learning and
teaching at university in the first decades at the 21 rst century will have to be conceived
and organised. Our attention is therefore mainly directed to the required pedagogical
processes.
Will this type of change have to be a radical change? University teachers who, in spite
of all obvious difficulties, continue to insist that the university is ‘basically healthy’,
will answer ‘No’ here, and will tend to speak in favour of a gradual adaptation of
traditional forms of studying to new situations. Futurologists who have analysed the
problems with which we will be faced in the knowledge society are of a different
opinion. They believe that the university will have to take on a completely different
shape. For example, Peter Ferdinand Drucker even prophesied in view of the digital
revolution that “30 years from now big university campuses will be relics” (Drucker &
Holden, 1997, p. 1745). And Gerhard Casper, the former President of Stanford University,
goes even further and asks with some presentiment whether in fact we will have in
future a ‘world without universities’ (Casper, 1996, p. 1). The present situation of the
university is therefore serious. There is no doubt that it is an acute ‘modernisation
crisis’. In fact, the only treatment available is a bold wave of modernisation such as
never before in the history of the academic teaching and learning.
In order to make clear the structural change that has become necessary it will be shown
how learning and teaching at the university could develop if it were to recognise the
challenges of the present and the future, accepted them and reacted to them in a
committed manner. A primary concern here is to define and to describe the functions of
digital information and communications technology (cf. Bacsish, 1998), because they
quite obviously not only suggest a structural change, but in part further it, or even force
its implementation. Furthermore, this type of sketch can supply criteria with which
experiences from abroad in this field can be analysed and evaluated under the aspect of
what they can contribute to planning the future university teaching. In addition, we
should examine whether they inspire and encourage us to take new paths.
New Changes
The educational and policy aims and requirements for universities suggest the following
changes for university teaching:
� Continuing education must not continue to be peripheral, carried on by the incidental
interests and activities of some members of the middle hierarchy (Woll, 1988). It
must be made into an essential task of the university that is taken up in the first
place by all university teachers.
� Because academic education and further education stretch over complete adult life,
universities must admit and look after adults of all ages.
� Universities must be ‘open universities’ in several respects.
204