Education goes global

Stephen Whiteside, organiser of Educause 2005, sees the internet as the future of tertiary education. Picture / Richard Robinson

Collaboration among institutions and a shift to student-centred learning using the internet are the future of tertiary education. That was the theme of an information technology conference in Auckland last week.

Educause 2005 brought together 560 delegates from educational IT, e-learning, library and research backgrounds.

Conference organiser Stephen Whiteside, director of IT at the University of Auckland, told delegates: "The real challenge for universities is to change their mindset from "chalk and talk" to embrace the different ways of learning we are now experiencing."

With only 6 per cent of learning occurring in lecture halls, educators could not afford to miss opportunities from digital technology and global information sharing.

University of Michigan Professor Daniel Atkins said the internet could enable students to take courses provided by institutions anywhere in the world, a "shift to consumer student-centred [education] as opposed to faculty or institution-focused".

Such developments would broaden the participation and quality of education and research.

Students separated by thousands of kilometres could simultaneously observe an experiment taking place in a laboratory.

Atkins highlighted the US development of a national virtual observatory as an example of future research and education.

Astronomers had created a virtual digital sky using data taken from physical telescopes. Data-mining software enabled astronomers and students to perform detailed research without needing to visit a telescope.

"It has a democratising dimension to it where broader constituencies can participate in scientific discovery and first-tier education."

Essential to global collaboration was a common digital infrastructure between nations and institutions.

Atkins described it as the virtual world's equivalent of an interstate highway system.

But it is a highway that needs investment. 

Atkins is working to raise awareness of the technological revolution under way.

He highlighted plans by the owners of internet search engine Google to digitise million of volumes of information held by various institutions. "We will in essence have the complete retrospective holdings of most of Western society in digital form within the coming decade."

That raised concerns about how to protect cyber-based information for future generations.

"If we don't figure out how to preserve those objects not just for next week but for hundreds of years, we'll actually lose a lot of our collective memory."

Atkins said Australia and New Zealand were well-suited technically and culturally to take a technical lead "because they have the sophistication and complexity ... but are small enough, with a tradition of government intervention".

In contrast, he said, the US had a "hands-off" view.