09-14-2010, 01:41 AM
Forgive the Gollinesque self-reply. More support for Gates' comments. The old guard is hanging on to their obsolete, expensive power structure. Your ballroom days are over baby.
Quote:The cyber university
By Paul Balles, Posted on » Saturday, September 04, 2010
In the 1960s, Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan identified a disconnect between how we live and learn outside of school vs inside. Since then, the disconnect has only grown.
McLuhan wrote: "Our entire educational system is reactionary, oriented to past values and past technologies and will likely continue so until the old generation relinquishes power."
The old generation only began to relinquish power within the last 10 years. Many academics are still hanging on for dear life.
What are they hanging on to? They're hanging onto classrooms, sitting at uncomfortable desks at inconvenient hours, surrounded by bare walls and smelly students.
They're hanging onto classes at badly scheduled hours and libraries with limited opening times, mildewed stacks with missing books and periodicals with pages torn out.
Academics are hanging on to their offices and classrooms in obsolete and costly campuses and school grounds. The soaring costs have made formal education hopelessly expensive for many.
More than anything, they're holding on to dull lectures by boring professors. Some still dictate to students from outdated notes they took when they were students.
With a strong belief that McLuhan's observations about media had even greater importance eight years ago, in an article on "Today's learning" I wrote: "The learning revolution isn't going fast enough! It's started, but proceeds slowly. My fascination with information technology (IT) comes from my vision that that's where learning is happening dynamically."
Since then, both the technology and the subject matter have grown and expanded almost beyond comprehension.
Eight years ago, when I groused about the slow development of IT as a learning tool, using a half dozen search tools occasionally provided useful information, if the request was worded correctly.
Today, with information on anything and everything, you don't need to be a wordsmith to get it. Google, Yahoo and others fill in the gaps and make suggestions.
Your education can now take place in home comfort. Stop for coffee when you feel like it. Do your learning at times suitable to you - in the middle of the night if that suits you.
Free courses aplenty are available online, along with extensive libraries full of books, news sources and magazines at any time 24/7, whenever you decide to connect.
Videotapes of the greatest lecturers in the world on any subject can be imported to your PC, saved and played as many times as you need.
No subject matter will be beyond your reach. Gone are the days of travelling to distant countries to access a research facility.
Forums and chat rooms for topical discussions are readily available. Experts, mentors and archives of Frequently Asked Questions provide answers to your most difficult queries.
It must have been this capacity that prompted Microsoft founder Bill Gates to make an important prediction at a technology conference early in August.
"Five years from now, on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world.
"It will be better than any single university. College, except for the parties, need to be less place-based."
He also stated that online learning could bring down the cost of a college education.
This may, in fact, be the determining factor about the future of education.
The old guard will hang onto the costly campus until there are no more students.
One of the old guard, commenting on Gates' remarks, wrote: "It would be a shame if Bill Gates is right and that the days of the college campus are numbered.
"Online learning works for many people, but so does the traditional university setting."
What's he holding on to?