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

The Transformation of the University Into an Institution of Independent Learning
be effectively and cheaply compensated for by means of e-mails and teleconferencing.
Without wishing to diminish the educational opportunities which the digital learning
environment can have in combination for ‘learning together apart’ (Kaye, 1992, p. 1)
and for ‘teaching face-to-face at a distance’ (Keegan, 1995, p. 108), the self-deception
that is found here must be pointed out. A technically imparted discourse is reduced and
altered in important points in a virtual seminar (Fabro & Garrison, 1998; Hesse & Giovis,
1997; Kiesler, 1992). The protagonists of electronic communications assume that, with
the help of technical communications media, learning in distance education and learning
in a digital learning environment will emulate the learning forms that are obtained in
traditional teaching (cf. the criticism by Beaudoin, 1998, p. 98). According to them, its
standing in the scientific community will increase (Garrison, 1993, p. 20). What a fatal
error for university education!
Forms of traditional academic teaching, in particular if they are based on address and
rejoinder and personal dealings, will be indispensable in the university of the future. In
these forms, the autonomy of tele-students that is acquired in independent learning in
distance teaching and in the digital learning environment can prove itself, be consolidated
and develop further. We are dealing here with a constitutive component of learning in
the university of the future.
Organisational Preconditions
In order to provide these three basic forms of academic learning with opportunities for
development, combination and integration, the university of the future must be
reorganised, restructured and rebuilt. The following matters will need to be addressed in
this regard.
Instead of having lots of lecture halls and organising mass teaching events on the
campus, the university of the future will have a communications system which enables
links to networks (Internet, Web), television and radio. It will have to maintain
laboratories for developing audio, video and multi-media teaching and study programmes
(including hypertext and hypermedia) at the state of the art. The university library will
be converted to a great extent to on-line operations, once the catalogues have been
digitalised and, for example, electronic journals, world literature and documents about
current scientific developments have been made available. To achieve all this, a technical
platform will have to be developed consisting of servers, author environments and tools
for university administration and library access (Unger, 1997).
At the same time, the structure of the university’s workforce will have to be altered by
means of a previously unheard-of number of educational designers, graphic artists,
media experts, Internet experts, project managers, the respective technicians and experts
for quality control (Behrens, 2001). However, the structure of appropriate development
institutions can only be justified financially with high numbers of students, such as
those which, up to now, have generally been achieved by some distance teaching
universities. Equipping traditional universities of average size with technology that is
required for distance studying and for studying in digital learning environments only
increases their costs in these times of chronic financial difficulty, instead of reducing
them. The only reduction in costs with increasing student numbers at present is taking
place in the distance teaching ‘mega universities’ (cf. Daniel, 1998).
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