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

The Transformation of the University Into an Institution of Independent Learning
(Kade, 1989) and Rolf Arnold for the dual mode university (Arnold, 1996). Also
traditional universities are subject to processes of extension that are becoming even
more intensive. Their traditional structures are becoming brittle. Gradually, a
‘deprivation of power’ (Kade, 1989, p. 801) is taking place in this once monopolistic
institution of research and teaching.
This is certainly not a unique feature but a general process which is at present changing
our society as a whole. Anthony Giddens argues that we are dealing here mainly with
the separation of time and space, the creation of disembedding mechanisms and the
reflexive acquisition of knowledge (cf. Giddens, 1995, p. 72). He speaks of a space-time
“increase in distances” that is typical for today. Through the “detachment from the
constraints of local habits and practices ... various possibilities for change” are opened
up (Giddens, 1995, p. 32). At the same time, social systems are “disembedded”. Social
relationships are lifted out of local interaction contexts and restructured so that they
overlap with the help of unlimited space-time margins. These findings, which are related
to society as a whole, apply in a particularly concise manner to the university of the
future that has been sketched here. This would then have to be interpreted as the result
and as a component of the processes of change within society in the sense of its
modernisation.
In fact, the close connection between space and time in traditional teaching becomes
obsolete here. There are now ‘increases in distance’ of any size between teachers and
students. The acts of learning and teaching are removed (‘disembedded’) from the
traditional context and dislocated. The decoupling in terms of time is expressed in the
a-synchronicity of most acts of teaching and learning and of academic discourse.
Teaching and learning functions are “disaggregated and unbundled” (Farrell, 2001, p.
146). In concrete terms: we are witnessing the change from traditional on-campus
teaching to that of a university without walls; from a university which remains closed to
many, to an open university; from an exclusive system of teaching and learning to an
inclusive system. Here we can only mention the great importance which the reflexive
acquisition of knowledge has for self-learning, self-studying and even more for the
formation of the identity of students who are autonomous, self-regulating and who work
individually.
As a consequence of the delimiting and destructuring processes, the university of the
future will have to extend its objectives, admit and counsel new groups, use new methods
and media, evolve new functions for its teachers and organise studies as a whole in a
completely new manner with regard to time and space. Research will naturally continue
to be the starting point, objective and means of teaching. However, even research is not
exempt from the typical processes of delimiting and destructuring, but is subject to them
even now to a great extent. An important feature of the crisis facing universities is in
fact the “emigration of research to other areas” (Mittelstraß, 1994, p. 7).
Will the teaching and learning of the future adopt professional planning with wellthought
out strategies? Or will rather more casual activities of individual, reformfriendly
university teachers encourage others and lead to this type of university almost
by accident? These might be those teachers who are full of enthusiasm for technical
progress and are experimenting at present with CD-ROM and teleconferencing, or
teachers who, convinced of the necessity of lifelong learning, are committed to the
concept of continuing education, and teachers who are inspired by new concepts of
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