For this issue I am giving over most of this column to the chairman of LearnTel - Prof. Paul Bacsich - who you will see below has been doing some extensive travelling recently and even as this edition goes to the printers he will be on his way to South America. However, before I pass over to him just a few words from me.
The main story highlights that the existing distance learning market is not an insignificant sector of the learning business even though it is only about three per cent of the overall European education and training market. With increasing pressures upon universities to increase their numbers of students with less funds university level distance learning is set to increase particularly in the area of post-graduate degrees. The emphasis towards encouraging life-long learning and more retraining is also likely to stimulate further interest.
Over the last few months I have been privileged to attend many of the main technology- based university education conferences around the world. In January I was at the conference launching the Finnish OU Broadcasting service. In March I was in Cairo for the first Arab conference on computer based learning. In May I was in Seoul, Korea for the first Online Educa conference ever held there. In June I was in Boston for EdMedia/EdTelecom, in July at Poitiers for EDEN (the European Distance Education Network, linking East with West), in August in Edinburgh for Interactive Learning, in September at another first for Online Educa, the inaugural South-East Asian conference in Singapore (see my article elsewhere in this edition) - and also in Dublin for the European Lifelong Learning conference. The circuit continues with the Columbus conference in Sao Paulo this month and the main Online Educa in Berlin in November. (Be there for my "Virtual Universities" workshop.) And this does not count all of them - like the more specialised conferences like those run by my Business School friends - the exhibition-conferences like CeBIT and Studie Beurs - and a few conferences that I have merely "net-surfed" into.
So apart from two lost suitcases, a cash-flow crisis on my credit cards and a chance to test my GSM mobile phone in more countries than you thought were on the network (but come on, America!), what are my impressions?
First, that in the "developed" world, there is an increasing commonality of approach. (The definition of "developed" would be an article in itself - let’s agree in a self-fulfilling kind of way that it means "most universities are on a high-speed Internet and professionals at home can have dial-up access to Internet". This covers many other countries now than just North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan.) There are still differences of approach - in the US and Australia they are keener on television-based services - but also a lot of agreement. And a lot of blind spots too - but the same blind spots across the world - such as not understanding computer conferencing.
Second, and because of the first reason, there is an increasing tension between traditional distance educators and the technology-based ones. One saw this most clearly at a world conference such as ICDE in Birmingham in 1995 where many third-world distance educators congregate, but it surfaces also in European conferences including in EADTU and EDEN circles. It is not a geographical or even a technical divide - to me it represents a cultural or ideological divide, between those who regard universities as a "noble calling", and those who regard them as having to be run in a business-like way even if they are not businesses.
The third main issue is that the technologists are still out of control. But rather than blame the technologists, I think it is time to blame those in charge in universities. The prevailing intellectual culture at the top of too many universities is not just anti-technological, it is anti-business as well. Indeed it is anti-historical, which by any definition comes close to anti-intellectual. Whether or not one can learn anything from history, one thing that is clear to most is that the pace of change is increasing. The certainties of yesteryear are evaporating - most institutions will struggle to keep on the trend curve without (and I would say that, wouldn’t I) radical re-engineering.
But re-engineering must be done carefully. As my colleague from Columbus quotes: "great organisations do have souls; any word with a ‘de-’ or ‘re-’ in front of it is likely to destroy those souls" (Henry Mintzberg).
Likely to, but not certain to. That is the challenge for the technocrats - to be mature enough to engender radical but culturally sympathetic change. And the challenge for the rectors? To empower the engineers, but within a compelling vision of what they want universities to become in the next millennium.