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Good morning and welcome to you all, particularly to our keynote speakers and our international visitors. This conference is a particularly timely event in the history of Australian education as those of us in higher education in Australia contemplate the future of what has been our distinctive form of delivery - through dual mode, largely publicly funded institutions. I don’t think it is alarmist to assert that we are at some kind of turning point in distance delivery here in Australia. For example, a very recent Australian study by Davis, Olsen and Bohm (2000) on provision of transnational education by Australian institutions makes the point that
Such blurring is, of course, most evident in this new phenomenon - transnational education, but the move in the 1990’s to flexible delivery on campus in Australia has also raised many questions about the future of distance education. This conference provides an opportunity for us to contemplate the future of distance education and to do so at a point when it is clear to many that we must think again about the assumptions, values and practices that we have seen as central to our understanding of the distinctive characteristics of distance education. Are we observing the future of something which will begin to explode in scale, or the end of a form of delivery? The future is clearly being shaped by the technological changes which now enable institutions of every kind to take much of what we defined as distinctive about distance delivery and apply it, not only to teaching and learning approaches on campus, but also to the delivery of programs in other countries. The movement to flexible delivery of programs on campus, in particular, is either an affirmation of all that distance education has sought to accomplish, or an effective conclusion to distance education as a distinct form of delivery. So then, what is the future of distance education? The answer is in part tied to the sub-themes of the conference: Competition, Collaboration, Continuity, and Change. Exploration of this question over the next three days will be clustered around these themes; themes which the organisers of the conference no doubt hope will provide a convenient framework for reflection. I’d like to take this opportunity to make some comment from the perspective of an Australian Vice Chancellor who is trying to make sense of the environment in which my university is planning for the future. I’ve found it helpful to arrange what I want to say around the sub themes and will now address each briefly. Distance education has largely been the preserve of public providers - government run or government funded organisations which have sought to provide wider access, within national boundaries, to the rewards of education, typically for people in remote areas. But with the growth of online capacity, we are now seeing two significant changes - first, the entry of private providers and, second, the competitive opportunity being defined as global rather than local or national. Institutions and companies are beginning to talk of competing in what they see as a global market for education services (to use the jargon). While the government funded providers remain in the market (and indeed still dominate in terms of numbers) it is clear that private providers are now entering. Their target is people who are employed but seeking to upgrade their qualifications. Let me take some relevant statements from Moe and Blodget in Merrill Lynch’s May 2000 report on The Knowledge Web. The publication itself is, of course, evidence that great commercial advantages are seen for those who enter and triumph in this new market.
And, most disarmingly,
What all of this means for traditional providers and for those countries which do not yet have the resources to provide mass access either to tertiary education or to learning is not clear. However, it does seem that the traditional providers of distance education could face one of two unpleasant futures. First, there is a real chance of their being residual providers - that is, providing a relatively impoverished (in terms of resources) form of education to those who cannot afford anything else. But even this may not be an option as these global education products could be inexpensive. If large multinational companies enter this market and invest heavily in content development, one could imagine a future where they offer provision of relatively high quality materials, the opportunity to choose and pay for both level and type of service (library, study advice, communication with tutors or assignment marking) and a price for sitting an exam. This would allow them to operate a low cost, high volume but relatively high quality form of provision which could compete very effectively with the large open universities. If they bring to the student technologically-mediated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) techniques then there is no doubt that they will offer a more effective service than most publicly funded distance education providers in any country. Finally, these new forms of competition, when allied to the global reach of Internet- enabled delivery, raise some troubling issues about the tyranny of the English language and the dominance of American cultural forms. I’m not going to pursue this issue here but I have no doubt it will be raised and discussed over the next few days. Increasingly educational institutions are recognising that the concept of the campus as a complete (and relatively closed) community, a form of city state, is no longer sustainable in an environment in which social, technological and economic change are pressing down upon the educational program. We cannot maintain a ‘safe’ distance from social and economic influences and we cannot offer our programs without working with partners - both other educational institutions and private companies. We all face some difficult questions about opening the institution up to industry, to new forms of collaboration in delivery and to new groups of students. We are all in the business of reinventing the university – attempting to retain the best elements of the traditional model as we seek to incorporate new ways of working. What sorts of collaboration are existing distance providers, and particularly those institutions which move into transnational delivery, entering? This latter area is particularly significant, I believe, because it is here that the competition between existing providers and new entrants is likely to be most fierce. Adams (1998) identifies seven forms of collaboration in transnational education - twinning, conventional distance education, licensing or franchising, moderated programs, offshore campuses, joint awards, online delivery. There are also new consortia appearing - groups like Scottish Knowledge, Cardean University (UNEXT.com), Universitas 21 or the Global University Alliance. These are alliances of higher education institutions and private companies designed to deliver into the new markets which have been identified in developing countries. Another form of collaboration is emerging as powerful private companies identify the opportunities in what they see as the lifelong learning market. Disaggregation of delivery of education is more possible with online delivery and new commercial entrants are now offering anything from a tool to put existing courses online, to ‘a comprehensive online learning solution’, that is the outsourcing of an institution’s learning environment. As well, various commercial providers, for example FT Knowledge, are now offering pre prepared content regularly updated, that is, they design and update the programs and the institution purchases and teaches them. I won’t dwell upon the quality assurance, legal and cultural dangers and opportunities of all these forms of collaboration. They are part of what should be discussed during the conference. If, however, the full slate of collaborative models now possible and in existence is not identified and discussed during this conference then a real opportunity to share experiences and to identify challenges and threats will have been lost. Continuity can mean one of two things. It can mean holding to some of the core values which underlie the traditional forms of provision of distance education. It seems to me that it is worth attempting to preserve these as other elements change. There is, however, a form of continuity which is actually resistance to change. This refusal to address the realities of the need to change systems, structures and behaviours will inevitably mean decline and irrelevance. In this part of my address, however, I want to touch upon some elements of the traditional distance education approach which seem to me worthy of fighting to preserve. Commitment to equity has been a longstanding feature of distance education theory and practice but now, despite the power of new technologies to provide educationally richer experiences, there is a real danger that the divide between technologically rich and poor societies or groups will widen. So while opportunities appear to widen , the capacity to embrace them will be, more than now, bounded by national or individual access to resources. Distance education too, as a variant of resource-based learning delivered to individuals, has freed many students from the constraints of time and place, increasing their study options and, in some instances, actually allowing study to be accommodated amongst a range of other personal and professional commitments. But while new technologies can widen choice and increase study options, they can be used simply to replicate on-campus conditions through a distributed network. This is not a form of continuity we should be supporting! But we should remember and acknowledge that much distance education practice has stood as a critique of the assumptions of conventional face-to-face delivery. It has been distance education that has taken seriously the notion of systemic student support, of ensuring forms of delivery match the capacity of students to access them, of insisting on good resources and services being provided to students who would otherwise have limited opportunity to compete equally with students on-campus. There is much of the past that is worth preserving as we move into new forms of delivery. There are, broadly, two major kinds of change impinging on distance education. First, are those changes that are applying in educational generally- globalisation, internationalisation, massification of tertiary education, technological developments, changes in government policy in the directions of less commitment to public education and increasing commitment to user-pays approaches. These changes impinge on all forms of delivery. Second, there are changes that have specific impact on distance delivery. In part these mirror what is happening generally, but have very particular consequences for distance education. For example, the new technologies significantly increase the reach of distance provision; they enable content to be much more current than ever before; they allow students to interact with each other and with staff on a 7 x 24 basis; and they open up a global market. But they extend what was the distinctive province of distance education to all providers, increasing competition. They break down the advantages of the specialist delivery and administrative infrastructure of the great distance teaching institutions by allowing any institution to offer the same kinds on service online. They foster a return to cottage-industry approaches to course development and delivery, striking at the kinds of quality standards that were the concomitant of the industrialised, systemic approaches to distance education delivery. A recent speech by an Australian bureaucrat nicely captures and summarises changes which are, initially, of concern to distance education providers but really are issues for all education providers:
So there are two broad issues - first, how to make the most of the changes that technology affords, without losing the advantages of distance provision which have been developed. And second, how to compete effectively with the ‘new wave’ providers as they enter our traditional markets and change the nature of the competition?
There will be differences in the mid-term for developed and developing nations. Those great distance education institutions of the developing nations, the Open Universities, will continue to discharge their national mandate to provider post-secondary education to increasing numbers of their people. But they will face competition for some of their more affluent and sometimes for their very able students from developed nations as institutions in those countries use the power of the new technologies to develop new economies of scale, lowering the price of their courses and offering the inducement of an international qualification. We will see new and powerful alliances, not only among higher education providers from around the globe, but also with media conglomerates and other private sector organisations that are increasingly able to offer support for components of the total educational program at a very high standard. We will see, too, institutions lose some of the overarching control they have exercised over all aspects of educational delivery in the past, as new players enter the online delivery market, and quite different business models are applied. What this conference could usefully do is take a hard look at what is happening, acknowledge that the pace of change is now confronting us with more questions than answers, and encourage the traditional distance providers to embrace change and collaboration while they accept there will be greater competition and little continuity. Professor Denise Bradley AO
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