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

The Transformation of the University Into an Institution of Independent Learning
We are dealing here with a change of educational paradigms, namely from a dominant
theory of expository teaching and reception learning to a dominant system of learning
by working out. New dimensions of self-learning are being developed for students
through the integration of the distance teaching tradition with the extraordinarily diverse
educational opportunities of the digital learning environment that are being opened.
“Social Intercourse”
The third basic form of study in the university of the future will finally and necessarily
provide traditional university teaching as well. This will not be presentational, but
interactive and communicative forms of teaching, because, from the aspect of educational
philosophy, the latter forms involve personal encounters. Free academic discourses in
seminars, classes or laboratories will be aimed for and developed further here.
Where persons come together to learn or discuss, where they are ‘eyeball to eyeball’
(Wedemeyer, 1971, p. 135) with their discussion partners, a specific atmosphere is created
in each case characterised by their individuality which can only be reproduced in part,
and indeed in a reduced form, by mediated means. A dialogue in the same room has
more elements than in an abstracting teleconference, even where this is not merely the
a-synchronous exchange of messages, but is in fact a video conference. Those taking
part experience an original and authentic dialogue. They absorb non-verbal signals and
unconscious behavioural reactions. With all their senses they become part of a multidimensional
encounter that can be analysed with psychological and sociological criteria.
For example, ‘Geselligkeit’ (social intercourse), which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in
1791 understood to be ‘active intercourse with educated persons’ (Goethe, 1994, p. 406).
Casper (1996) asks whether the university will survive in the age of communications
technology, and comes to the conclusion that this will only happen if it is ‘irreplaceable’.
He concludes that such irreplaceability is probably ‘only the link between research and
teaching in laboratories and seminars’ under the precondition that universities create
‘those working conditions for professors and students’ (which) ‘presuppose and really
enable social intercourse’ (Casper, 1996, p. 25).
Is it old-fashioned to presume that this direct participation in university discourse that has
an ‘educational’ effect in the true meaning of the term? The contribution that it can provide,
for example, to the development and differentiation of the student’s own scientific thought
processes through conscious or unconscious imitation, through following the teacher’s
train of thoughts or arguments or through spontaneous contradiction, is incomparable.
And what it can achieve during the acquisition of (spoken) academic language, and above
all in the process of academic socialisation and the development of habits of mind, is of
great educational value. Anthony Bates says, ‘There are many things that are valuable in
education, as in life, which technology cannot do, and we need to recognise that’ (Bates,
1997, p 95). And Wolfgang Klafki, the distinguished German educationalist, when asked
by a journalist about the chances for learning in a virtual university replied succinctly,
‘It is clear that a university will fail if it disregards direct communications between
persons. We should not even try this out.’ (Seyfferth, 1998, p. 75).
These arguments should be used to respond to those technology enthusiasts who believe
that, on the one hand, face-to-face teaching, as practised in traditional universities, can
be replaced and, on the other, the lack of direct communication in distance teaching can
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