Duringthe 1990s we saw an explosion of the information economy, and what maybe the beginning of a move away from dominance of education bygovernment, to dominance by business. Not only has business establishedits own research programs for the production of new knowledge, it hasalso increased its efforts in the dissemination of that knowledge,through establishment of teaching institutions such as the McDonald'sHamburger University, the American Express Quality University, theDisney University, the MasterCard University and the Xerox DocumentUniversity to name a few.
The recent mergers of giant telephone companies, computer companies,television companies, wireless services, information and entertainmentindustries, has also created new 'megamedia' industries, the majorityof whom see education as the biggest potential market. One suchcablevision company, Jones International established the Mind ExtensionUniversity: The Education Network in 1987, and offers distanceeducations courses which have enabled hundreds of students to qualifyfor degrees from George Washington University, the University ofMaryland, and the University of Arizona (Maney, 1995).
How has higher education responded to increased external competition inall aspects of its work? Some believe that higher education isblissfully unaware of these changes: "There seems to have been littlecuriosity about the changing character of the society of which they(universities) are part, and about their own changing functions in thesocial and in the wider intellectual life of the community" (AulichReport, 1990). It is difficult not to be aware however, of attempts byuniversities to utilise the promised potential of informationtechnologies in teaching, learning, research and administration.However, most institutions have adopted a cottage-industry approach tothe use of technology, providing very small grants to alreadyover-worked academics, without providing the level of infrastructureand support necessary for successful innovation, and then wondering whythe promised large-scale improvements in teaching and learning have notbeen realised.
If universities are serious about utilising technology for learning andteaching, they must provide adequate funding for project development,access to scholars in teaching and learning in the context of highereducation, access to academics who are not only content experts, butwho also understand the ways in which students understand and learnthat content, and access to appropriate technological expertise andresources. It is only with this level of support, that education has achance of effectively utilising new technologies to improve learningand teaching by providing learning experiences that have not previouslybeen possible, rather than just repackage old teaching methods.
So what is the future promised for higher education? A future whereuniversities license their existing courses to megamedia companies inorder to pay the salaries of their staff and equip libraries? A futurewhere students pay fees to FoxTel or OptusVision for the pleasure ofwatching replayed videotapes of lectures via cable television? Or afuture where the focus of course development is not only on content,but where current research on learning is combined with technology toenable large-scale changes in what and how our students learn?
Shirley Alexander is Associate Professor and Director of theInstitute for Interactive Multimedia at the University of Technology,Sydney. Her research relates to what we know about student learning inhigher education and evaluation methodologies for multimediaprograms.
