Educational Media

Educational Media by Tony Bates

However, the most difficult part of the system to put in place will be an appropriate educational infrastructure to support the kind of learning needed in the 21st century. The provision of appropriate education and training services to run on the information highway is critical; there is no automatic guarantee that people will use the information highway to an extent that justifies the cost of investment, if services are not provided that meet people’s needs. Unfortunately, existing educational institutions were created to meet the needs of a society that are fast disappearing. We need new educational organizations that can exploit the information highway to meet the needs of the 21st century. Economic development will depend as much on the success of creating and supporting such organizations, as on establishing the technological infrastructure. It is critical to get this right because those countries that harness the power of multi-media communications for education and training purposes will be the economic powerhouses of the 21st century

What Kind of University?

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