Teaching matters: Most people concerned with third-level, myself included, have in recent years become so fixated on the need to beef up our research capability that the equally important aspect of teaching and learning in higher education has tended to be somewhat neglected. Yet it is surely the case that if we are to create a world-class education system we have to devote the same effort to both dimensions.
In this article, I want to focus on just one aspect of teaching/learning - the eLearning issue. I do so because it is likely, over the next decade, to bring about radical change across the world of learning, and for Ireland this can be either a threat or an opportunity.
eLearning is potentially a threat to us because it will dissolve the national boundaries that, at the moment, tend largely to define the primary catchment area of a third-level institution. At present Irish universities do have to compete internationally for both staff and students, but not on their own territory: if they lose out, the student or academic concerned moves physically to another country.
But eLearning makes possible competition within Ireland between universities located here and those located anywhere else in the world, competition that is likely to be encouraged by emerging trends in world trade regulations. In such a scenario, world-class universities could poach the best undergraduates from under the noses of Irish universities, without any physical travel being involved.
Such is the threat. The opportunity is on the other side of the same coin. If Ireland embraces eLearning with the right level of commitment and imagination, this country could carve out for itself a leadership niche in this new kind of pedagogy. Such a positioning would fit well with the vision of a Knowledge Society that we aspire to create, and fit equally well into a Europe that also aspires to a leadership position under the Lisbon agenda.
What do we need to do to make this happen? In my view, Irish universities need to make two radical changes in their approach to eLearning.
The first is that they must turn their backs on a view of eLearning that regards it as an "add on" component, rather than a core activity. Much of the recent activity in Irish universities has happened at the periphery, largely driven by technical people rather than by academics. In many cases, the initiatives have left the basic activity of teaching largely untouched.
A major change of mind-set is needed in our third-level institutions, if Ireland is to become a centre of excellence in eLearning, let alone if we are to achieve a leadership position. I do not underestimate the size of the challenge: teaching is notoriously resistant to advances in technology, and universities tend to cling with tenacity to a form of lecturing that has not changed greatly since before the invention of the printing-press. Resistance to change is strengthened by the experience of recent false dawns, as when the initial wide-ranging claims made for the impact of overhead projectors and personal computers turned out in practice to be somewhat damp squibs.
But this time the revolution is coming, and we ignore it at our peril. The future core of university teaching lies not in the traditional lecture hall but in the VLE, or "virtual learning experience". This has as much relevance for in-campus learning as it does for distance learning, on which most of the emphasis has been put up to now. Tomorrow's undergraduate course will have eLearning at its core: instead of merely enhancing the educational experience, eLearning will become the main facilitator of it. The pay-off will come in more productive teaching, with benefits for both teachers and students alike.
Getting from here to there will not be easy. Apart from overcoming the inbuilt resistance to change, the transformation to eLearning will require both significant investment in the necessary hardware and, even more importantly, a strong commitment to travel the learning curve in what is a radically different way of doing things.
It is all too easy to turn one's back on such a challenge. But if our third-level institutions fail to confront this opportunity, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant in the new world that is fast emerging. The torch will pass to those who are prepared to beat a path into the unknown.
There is a further hurdle to be crossed. So far, what initiatives that have been taken on eLearning in Ireland have happened at the level of the individual institution. Our seven universities, for instance, have all been busy inventing the new wheel in their own individual ways. The result has not only been the absence of a coherent national approach to the issue, even more important, these fragmented efforts have failed to reach critical mass.
Consider this fact: Stanford University, a university of 17,000 students with a budget of more than $2.5 billion, felt it had to partner with the equally wealthy Princeton, Yale and Oxford universities on a distance- education programme for their alumni. Why? Because it was too expensive to go it alone.
If some of the wealthiest, most prestigious universities in the world feel that they have to collaborate to make a success of eLearning, surely there is a lesson here for us.
So the challenge facing our third-level institutions is two-fold: one, they have to rid themselves forever of their ingrained mind-sets about teaching methods; and two, they must collaborate as never before in carving out together a leadership niche for Ireland in the new world.
Danny O'Hare is a former president of DCU
