The change of the learning paradigm

The future of Networking Technologies for Learning

The entire document can be found at: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/index.html

In an attempt to answer the question, "What is the future of networking technologies for learning," the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various aspects of educational networking and hosted a workshop to discuss the issues. These white papers and the workshop report are the result of this commission.

overview and abstracts

Electronics and the Dim Future of the University

Eli M. Noam
Professor of Finance and Economics
Director, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

tel: (212) 854-4222
fax: (212) 932-7816
e-mail: enoam@research.gsb.columbia.edu

By now, everybody knows about it -- about the tremendous advances in computer networks as tools of inquiry; about the free communication links among researchers around the world; about the loss of stifling organizational hierarchy and coercive governmental controls; and about the ethic of sharing information instead of commercializing it. Technology, it seems, has created a new set of tools for academic endeavors, strengthening and enriching the existing research environment.

Parts of this exciting scenario are indeed coming true. Yet to conclude therefore that the global academic village is all gain and no pain (beyond perhaps the need to protect against a few immature but creative youngsters) would be naive. True, communications technology will link the information resources of the globe. But as one connects in new ways one also disconnects the old ways. Thus, while new communications technologies are likely to strengthen research, they will also weaken the traditional major institutions of learning, the universities. Instead of prospering with the new tools, many of their traditional functions will be superseded, their financial base eroded, their technology replaced, and their role in intellectual inquiry reduced. This not a cheerful scenario for higher education.

Scholarly activity, if viewed dispassionately, consists primarily of three elements: to create knowledge and evaluate its validity; to preserve information; and to pass it on to others. Accomplishing each of these functions is based on a set of technologies and economics. Together with history and politics, they lead to a set of institutions. Change the technology and economics, and the institutions must change, eventually.

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A Paradigm Shift from Instruction to Learning

A Digest from the ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges.

by Gwyer Schuyler

url: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ERIC/digests/dig9802.html