enable them to take high-quality courses on their computers from the convenience of
their home, workplace, or any other location connected to the internet.
Jacques Monnard (Fribourg, Switzerland)
How the Virtual Campus Will Change
Future Education
Wie der virtuelle
Bildung verändert
Campus
die
zukünftige
Summary
Zusammenfassung
In recent years, there has been a parallel
trend in distance education and traditional
universities towards technology-mediated
teaching and learning. Clearly, this
evolution suggests that contemporary
universities will change a lot in the years
ahead. But how? In this paper, we suggest
a number of themes that will likely
characterize higher education in the
coming decade. We also present a vision
of what the student’s educational
experience might look like in the future.
Seit einigen Jahren lässt sich eine parallele
Entwicklung beim Fernunterricht und bei
traditionellen Universitäten hin zu
technologieunterstützem
Lernen
beobachten. Die klassischen Universitäten
werden sich offensichtlich erheblich
verändern. Aber wie? Wir werden in
diesem Artikel eine Reihe von Aspekten
erörtern,
die
wahrscheinlich
die
universitäre Ausbildung des nächsten
Jahrzehnts charakterisieren. Wir werden
ebenfalls eine Vision vorstellen, wie die
Lernerfahrung aus der Sicht eines
Studenten in Zukunft aussehen könnte.
1
At the same time, traditional universities have also been adopting these new
technologies – sometimes reluctantly – and applying them to many aspects of their
mission, be it administration (online student registration), research (access to online
genetic databases) or teaching (presentation software, web-based conferencing).
With all the changes taking place in universities, many questions can be asked
about the future of higher education, such as how traditional universities will be
transformed, or who will pay the cost of these developments. The issues are broad and
varied, and take place in a context of rapidly changing technology. Moreover, there is
no agreement regarding the “best” way to use technology in teaching or the future
structure and role of educational institutions servicing the different sectors. To predict
the future of higher education in such an uncertain climate would be ambitious, to say
the least. Rather, the aim of this paper is to propose a vision of what a student’s
educational experience might look like in a few years. We make no claim about the
accuracy of our predictions. Our hope is just that the ideas introduced here will serve
as a background against which to discuss this important subject.
Before we present our vision, it is worth briefly analyzing the main factors of
change as they will play an influential role in shaping the educational landscape in the
coming years.
2
The rush to distance education and technology-supported learning is being fueled by a
number of technological and societal factors:

Just as the Gutenberg press made knowledge widely available through the printed
word, contemporary advances are creating new opportunities that permit the
widespread availability of diverse forms of information, education, services and
entertainment. These advances include, for instance, the development of new
technologies arising from the convergence of computers, broadcast and
communications, the growing availability of ever-faster wired and wireless access
to the Internet, broad access to increasingly affordable personal computers and
software, improvement in areas such as content compression and streaming, or the
adoption of standard protocols for the exchange of data (e.g. HTML, XML). These
advances make learning feasible without the requirement of having the teacher and
the learner in the same place. They also add to the range and flexibility in
approaches to learning.

There is a growing demand for (higher) education, especially from adult learners
(2). The Age of Knowledge requires workers in all sectors of the economy to be
highly skilled and stay up-to-date, without interrupting work service for extended
Introduction
In October 1999, the Swiss Confederation launched the “Swiss Virtual Campus”
program (www.virtualcampus.ch). According to this plan, Swiss universities should
be encouraged to rethink some of their courses and make them available electronically
on the internet. They should also allow their students to gain credits through courses
taken on the net.
The Swiss Virtual Campus is just another example of many similar initiatives,
which have been started all over the world in recent years. The main objective of these
distance learning programs is to take advantage of developments in information and
communication technologies and provide students with a virtual mobility that will
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Factors of change
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periods of time. So learning should be available at any time and wherever the
people are. The hope is that the new information and communication tools will
bring at least a partial solution to these needs and provide opportunities for
lifelong learning.


3
The cost factor is also a major reason for the interest in distance learning. There is
a widespread perception that distance learning can reduce the cost of education.
The idea here is that once a distance course has been produced, it can be widely
distributed at a minimal cost to a large number of students, according to the axiom
“more students, less teachers, less classrooms”. But this is a dangerous and
simplistic perception. Potential savings in the long term, for instance, might be
offset by the significant investments that are usually requested up front. Still, this
is a much debated issue, and a definitive answer is nowhere in sight.
Another important factor, which is sometimes overlooked, is that there is also a
growing demand from younger learners for technology-based education. These
members of the so-called “digital generation” are computer literate and have spent
their early lives surrounded by electronic media: television, video-games, home
computers, cyberspace networks, etc. They combine this literacy with a facility for
computer games. They are unaccustomed and unwilling to learn sequentially, and
approach learning as a “plug-and-play” experience. Consequently, these students
are not only more amenable to technology-based interactivity, but they are also
more likely to expect technology-mediated learning as part of a more diverse set of
learning approaches and modes of delivery.
But what if what if all these problems were solved? What if we could combine the
best of both forms of education? And how can we make the best use of learning
technologies? To answer these questions, let us now imagine what the campus of the
future might look like.
An interactive, integrated service and learning
environment
In the campus of the future, the student’s learning experience starts with an innovative
campus information system. This is an interactive, integrated service and learning
environment which enables faculty, students, and staff to handle most if not all aspects
of the campus life online, such as recruiting, admission, registration and fees, student
life, etc. This system has the following characteristics:

Virtually all administrative and academic information of interest to students can be
found online. This includes such diverse data as registration information, course
schedules, addresses of fellow students, grades and transcripts, etc. There is an
online presence for every subject, staff member and student, and each course has a
web site, which includes a variety of resources: learning and reference materials,
communication tools, external pointers, etc. Since students know that all university
related information and services they might be looking for are available online,
this system will be much more fully integrated into the on-going campus life than
today’s campus information systems. In fact, in many cases, learning will begin
and end in the online environment.

The system is interactive, in that it provides not only information, but information
services. Students can, for instance, register online, apply for financial aid, drop
and add courses or rearrange their schedules.

The information is personalized for each student. For example, the system can
provide a course catalog tailored to the student’s need. If a student goes online to
register for classes, the system knows what the student’s degree program is, what
courses he has taken and what courses he would likely choose from. Similarly,
there is a self-service degree audit system (6), where students can call up their
degree requirements. The system can also find out what the student’s degree
requirements would be if he switched majors.

Every student has his own home page in this environment, which he can customize
to his needs. He can add other services to it, such as a news service or a
personalized calendar. Of course, the student has a single login for access to all
services provided by the system.
Learning in the campus of the future
The combination of the above factors has caused a parallel trend in distance education
and traditional universities towards asynchronous and technology-mediated learning,
so that the lines are sometimes blurring between these two forms of education.
But the student’s experience with technology-supported instruction is still far from
ideal. On the one hand, many of the current offerings from virtual universities fall
short of the campus equivalent. Some of the problematic issues include: a passive
learning style with “no real interaction, no real doing, no real excitement” (8) that
comes from simply transferring the “knowledge transmission” model of teaching to
the new media and makes no allowance for the interactivity allowed by the new
technologies, a threat to the sense of community, and the potential isolation of
learners.
Similarly, there are many shortcomings in traditional universities regarding the
integration of new technologies in the students’ daily life: not all information of
interest to students is available online, they can’t plug their laptop into the university
network (especially during classes), not all courses have a web page, etc. In short,
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instead of a well articulated and homogenous strategy, universities have implemented
patchy initiatives using piecemeal methods to deliver uncoordinated online services.
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
Any service provided by the university which could possibly have an online
presence is integrated in the environment. This includes, for instance, a digital
library, where students can access electronic versions of most documents, or
learner support systems (7). Links to additional references, like online
encyclopaedias and similar resources also form part of the toolset to which
learners have access through this system.

All the elements of the application are consistently integrated and appear under a
coherent if not uniform interface. This is in stark contrast with the current
situation, where there is often no coordination between the various components
(e.g. the administrative information system, learning management systems, etc.).
This online environment becomes the hub of the student’s work and learning,
communication and informational needs. It represents the first step towards what
McKey calls “the Total Student Experience, a consistent framework which integrates
all the elements of the system a student interacts with when they enter into a course of
study” (5).
Classrooms without walls
While the online environment described above will play an important part in the
student’s learning experience, on-campus learning will certainly not disappear. Rather,
the “connected” campus of the future will seamlessly integrate physical and virtual
components. Courses may remain classroom-centric as opposed to web-centric (which
puts too much focus on the technological aspect), but the classroom will be both
extended and transformed in the process (9). It will become a “classroom without
walls”. For instance, one professor might be in a physical (but wired) classroom and
have an online interactive interview with an expert on chemical hazards, while the
students annotate his slides on their laptop, which is wirelessly connected to the
university network. Another student might work in the virtual classroom, doing his
homework with an online database at home and preparing an assignment he will post
on the course web site.
In this model, the course web site plays a key role: it bridges the distance between
the physical classroom (if there is one) and the “metaphysical” classroom that teachers
and students create together each semester, and provides continuity from week to
week (3). This web site contains all the learning resources pertaining to the course, but
more importantly, it also includes various social and intellectual spaces where online
communication can take place, such as a discussion area, a virtual cafe, or a help area.
The combination of these spaces provides faculty and students with a sense of
community, a community that comes together for learning for a specific period of
time. This is especially important when teachers and learners never meet face to face,
as is the case in virtual only universities.
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Another critical element is that each student has a laptop (or maybe an electronic
book or a Personal Digital Assistant). With a laptop, students never truly leave the
learning environment, and have always access to the virtual classroom. They are also
encouraged to integrate the computer into their daily activities. If teaching and
learning take place in classrooms, libraries, or social spaces on campus, then it is
important that the students have the tools of learning with them at all times, very much
like a book. Indeed, these new tools are becoming the students’ books, notebooks, and
pencils. Not only do students use their computers to download class notes, participate
in chat groups, and email their professors, but they also use them to explore the world
via the Internet and apply the information they find there in class.
More active and collaborative learning
How will learning activities themselves be transformed in the new “classrooms
without walls”? In fact, the new information and communication technologies will
permit an increase in the amount of interaction and communication experienced by
faculty and students during a course, whether students are on campus, at home, at the
office or hundreds of miles away. They will allow a strengthening of the three types of
dialogue which are the core of education: the dialogue between the faculty and the
students, the dialogue between and among students, and the dialogue between a
student and instructional resources (1). The dialogue between faculty and students,
and between and among students, might be facilitated by online electronic discussions,
or two-way audio-video conferencing. The dialogue between students and
instructional resources might be facilitated by the use of information resources on the
web or joint research projects.
Accordingly, there will be less of the traditional lectures, where the professor
stands in front the class and “recites his lesson”. Instead, teachers will take advantage
of technology to deliver meaningful content in whichever mode is more appropriate to
the student. They will use multiple set of communications media to enable and
encourage active and collaborative learning. Courses will employ simulations, audio,
video, electronic mail and communications, the web, on-line discussions with external
experts, and content resources as appropriate for the goals and objectives of the
learning, the characteristics of the students, and available resources.
Today’s (and tomorrow’s) learners will need to be able to process complex
information, solve problems, make decisions against the background of uncertainty,
relate their knowledge and skills to novel and ever changing situations, and work in
teams. Learning therefore should be constructive, goal oriented, systematic and
collaborative. Information and communication technologies are a tool which will give
students the opportunity to become such constructive and creative learners. They will
learn by doing and discovering, often with their peers. They will also have more
choices in the way they learn. They will have to choose the learning resources they
want to use among the many available to them. In many cases, they will be able to set
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and pursue their own learning goals at their own pace. Thus, they will need to become
more independent and self-disciplined in their learning. They won’t necessarily find
this new learning process easy, but the teachers will be there to support them.
A new role for teachers
In the traditional lecture mode of delivery, a faculty member is cast as a “sage on the
stage”, whose role is to transmit knowledge to the students. In the new teaching and
learning model described above, with less lectures and more autonomous students,
there is no doubt that this role will change. Will the teacher become the “guide on the
side”, as is often predicted? Maybe not. This second model, which may also be called
the “Call me if you need me” or “I’ll be stopping by” approach, may be well suited to
programmed learning and stand-alone distance courses. But Boettcher (1) suggests
another model which seems more appropriate for the information age. It is called
“mentoring”. Mentoring is a more facilitative model of teaching that more closely
approaches the Socratic method, as opposed to more traditional lecture-based models.
A mentor encourages, stimulates, guides his students and helps them select and
structure concepts and information. He converses with them and inspires them to
experiment so that they feel involved in their learning. For those who would think this
is a radical change in the role of teachers, it is worth recalling that the classroom
lecture is a relatively recent form of pedagogy. Throughout the last millennium, the
more common form of learning was through apprenticeship, which is in fact a form of
mentoring.
While this certainly represents a challenging task for teachers, new technologies
provide tools that make it possible. First, online communication, rather than
depersonalizing the learning process, often permits stronger intellectual bonds
between professor and student than is possible in the traditional classroom (at least in
large classes). As a student in an online course comments, “the instructor made me
feel as if we were old friends within the first two weeks of class” (4). Another
advantage of online communication is that each party can send and receive messages
at times convenient to them. And technology can also support the creation of the
experiences needed to build knowledge and perspective (e.g. with simulation software
or virtual laboratories).
Expanding learning options
Based on the above premises, we can also predict that the organization of the learning
process will change in the future. Firstly, we will see a much greater mix of residential
and distance learning. Residential universities will always be in demand, but
technology will expand the reach and range of these traditional settings (for instance
with online communication). Hybrid organizations will also be formed where students
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can synthesize on-campus with online experiences. Other learners, particularly
working adults, constrained by time, location or other factors, may opt for online
educational experiences that provide them with the education and flexibility they
need.
There will also be new forms of partnership between teaching institutions.
Universities will collaborate to deliver modules, courses and degrees to individuals
and groups of learners who interact with faculty and with learning material, both in
real-time and asynchronous mode. Their audience will consist of the distant learner,
the on-campus student who wishes a more individualized, self-paced learning
experience, and the student who wants to combine both approaches to learning.
Students will have the option of completing their degree by taking online and oncampus courses from different universities in such a consortium.
As for the courses themselves, many of them will consist in a mixture of
synchronous and asynchronous delivery. The obvious advantages of the asynchronous
mode is the “anytime, anywhere” aspect that fits the learners’ schedules. The
limitation, of course, is the real-time interaction with others, whether the professor,
teammates on a group project, or classmates in general. Thus, there is great value in
mixing asynchronous with synchronous. For example, one course might start and end
at the same time for everybody. For the most part, the students do their homework and
study on their own schedules and to their own habits. They can jump into the fray of a
discussion thread any time day or night, for example. But the professor also programs
a few fixed schedule events: an online seminar, a classroom session where students
can ask questions to an external expert through videoconferencing, the final exam, or
even a closing dinner that brings all the participants together face-to-face. The
professor also works in a project involving groups of three or four students where
sufficient brain-storming is required that the groups meet online or in person to
accomplish the assignment.
4
Infrastructure and support
Even though we are talking about a vision for the future, it might still be worth briefly
considering some of the factors that will help make it a reality. How can universities
best facilitate the migration towards the new model of education?
At a general level, campuses will need to be technology-friendly and supportive to
students, faculty, and staff. This means they will have to provide the appropriate
infrastructure and support:

A full network access for faculty and students will be essential to participation in
an electronic information rich environment. Network access (wired or wireless)
must be available all over the campus, so that students and faculty can use their
laptops anywhere, and have always access to the now twenty-four-hour virtual
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classroom. Remote access to the campus network must also be offered to students
and faculty working off-campus.




5
Universities will need more campus spaces that accommodate the new teaching
and learning paradigms. Classrooms will have to be fully wired, and new types of
seminar rooms or auditoriums will be created. Some of these spaces will be
specially equipped, for instance with sophisticated presentation systems or video
conferencing facilities.
Faculty support is essential. Learning technologies support centres must be
established, with expertise in instructional design and pedagogical practices,
among other areas. They should develop and support templates that facilitate the
creation of technology-mediated learning, and provide in-house training, “train the
trainer” and pilot projects. There should also be support persons who can deal with
issues ranging from the securing of copyright clearances to managing technical
resources. Discipline specific technical staff needs to be available, using the same
model that libraries use of having a humanities reference librarian, a social science
reference librarian and so forth.
Students should receive support through access to equipment, software, related
services and a help service. Some of the support services might be delivered with
the same methods that will be used for instruction, i.e. remotely and/or
asynchronously.
Finally, there should be a campus-wide and concerted effort, through seminars and
workshops, to keep the campus community – students, faculty and administrators
– informed about new developments in the technology as well as providing ways
to update skills.
Conclusion
The many challenges facing higher education in the digital age suggest strongly that
the university will change in very fundamental ways, but they do not suggest a
particular form for universities. Rather, the ever-increasing diversity characterizing
higher education worldwide makes it clear that there will be many forms, many types
of institutions serving our society. For now, we can suggest a number of themes that
will likely characterize higher education in the years ahead:

1
The way in which the curriculum is designed and delivered will change. More
teaching will take place using computing technologies in many different ways, and
there will be a greater mix of residential and virtual learning. Asynchronous
learning – anytime, anyplace, for anyone – will break the constraints of time and
space and make learning opportunities more compatible with lifestyles and needs.
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
Information technologies will enable students to have more choices in the way
they learn, with different modes and paces of learning which fit their individual
needs and cognitive styles. Students will use these technologies to get access to
information from a variety of sources (many of them networked), and have access
to a wide variety of learning resources which will make for a more active learning
experience.

The process of student-faculty and student-student communication, enriched
through computer conferencing and online discussion groups, will be more
interactive and collaborative. While there will still be face-to-face meetings,
communication tools will allow faculty and students to discuss, debate, and work
in teams without being present in the same place at the same time. With less time
spent in lectures, professors will have more time for two-way discussion, for
helping students build on what has been learnt, and for the mentoring and
interaction which should be a key part of higher education.
In the transition to this new teaching and learning paradigm, higher education will
evolve to create a culture of learning for our society, a culture in which educational
opportunities become pervasive through the use of information technology.
6
References
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3. Keating, Anne B., with Hargitai, John, The Wired Professor: A Guide to
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1,
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