New Technologies to Strengthen
University Teaching and Learning Processes will be at the center of WGHE
activities in 1999-2000
In Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century(1), Prof.
Michael Gibbons, Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth
Universities, presents a compelling vision of how knowledge will be
generated and transmitted in the years ahead, and of the substantial
implications of these changes for the organization and provision of
higher education. Research will be increasingly carried out through
networked multidisciplinary teams which are recruited from public and
private sector organizations and come together for a limited period
to undertake a specific task. Teaching will move away from the time-honored
model of the scholarly professor who lectures students in a classroom,
to more learner-centered and learner-managed approaches supported by
new information and communications technologies. In the larger context,
higher education will become an internationally tradable commodity in
the global knowledge-based economy, encroaching on the traditional monopolies
of national higher education institutions.
These trends embody significant changes for higher education institutions.
First, the teaching emphasis on the transmission of disciplinary knowledge
will decline as developing competence in professional skills needed
for the 21st century takes precedence. These skills include problem
identification, information management, problem-solving, communications,
teamwork, and negotiation. Second, the role of libraries will assume
far greater importance as they become information hubs for students,
scholars, and the community at large. The traditional measure of library
quality, the number of volumes in the collection, will lose meaning
as the main measure of library performance becomes its ability to identify
and access electronically information located anywhere in the world.
Third, the complexity and expense of future teaching and research activities
suggest that partnerships among universities, and between universities,
public institutions and the private sector, will become a fundamental
strategy. Institutions will be compelled to work together in the research
and development phase of product and service design, even as they compete
with each other in marketing the resulting outputs. In this context,
universities of the future will be much reduced in size, more flexibly
managed, and capable of using intellectual resources that they don't
fully control. They will comprise a small core of faculty managers and
a much larger periphery of experts who are linked to the university
in various ways.
Whether or not African higher education embraces these changes, it
will not be immune from their effects. In recognition of this likelihood,
the ADEA Working Group on Higher Education will organize its activities
during the coming two years around the theme New Technologies to Strengthen
Teaching and Learning Processes. Among the possible topics of attention
are virtual universities, on-line libraries, teaching for lifelong learning,
distance education, and quality assurance and accountability in a networked
world.
1. Higher Education Relevance in the 21 st Century, by Michael
Gibbons was prepared for and presented at the UNESCO World Conference
on Higher Education held in Paris, October 5-9, 1998.
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