What Kind of University?
The challenge for universities
Many universities are making substantial investments in new technologies for teaching purposes. The increasing ease of use and improved presentational and interactive features of technologies such as the World Wide Web are leading many academics to use technology for teaching for the first time in a significant manner.
However, although there has been widespread adoption of new technologies for teaching in the last few years, they have yet to bring about major changes in the way teaching is organized and delivered. Without such changes, though, technology-based teaching will remain a marginalized activity, while at the same time leading to increased unit costs.
For technological change to be effective, it usually needs to be accompanied by major structural and organizational changes for its full potential to be realised. This paper attempts to indicate some of the strategies that universities may need to adopt in order to use technology effectively for teaching and learning.
This is a classic paper by Tony Bates 1997 is important and certainly appeals on first glance. He goes on to outline 12 steps in which the University will be reformed, transformed – I’ll list them here.
Twelve organizational strategies for change 10
1. A vision for teaching and learning 11
2. Funding re-allocation 12
3. Strategies for inclusion 13
4. Technology infrastructure 15
5. People infrastructure 15
6. Student computer access 16
7. New teaching models 18
8. Faculty agreements and training 20
9. Project management 21
10. New organizational structures 23
11. Collaboration and consortia 26
12. Research and evaluation 27