EXPLOITING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN ISSUES PAPER
86. The SCIR seeks to promote and aid the preparation of high level information strategies within universities, as such an approach can ensure the coherent and integrated implementation of innovative information systems. This chapter concentrates on the more predictable developments likely to come to fruition within the next five to ten years.
87. The traditional lecture or tutorial is not the only approach to the teaching and learning experience; technology has made various forms of distance and open learning possible through radio and television and more recently via computer based formats such as diskettes and CD-ROM. Similarly the printed word is not the only method of storing information for teaching and learning; other formats and the concept of the "virtual library" are discussed in the next section. This section concentrates on likely developments in the means of information delivery for teaching and learning through examining enabling technologies and analysing inhibiting factors such as funding and culture.
88. This section starts with a brief analysis of the teaching and learning process and a review of the pressures forcing change on the teaching and learning experience. The issues of developing flexible courseware, the delivery platforms likely to be available and the methods for delivering teaching material are then considered
89. The MacFarlane Report identifies the following teaching functions:
which are carried out by a number of methods: lecturing; independent study; tutorials and discussion groups; practicals, field work and project work; and assessment procedures. This creates a complex, interacting system in the provision of teaching and the support of learning.
90.The process is cyclic with the output providing the motivation and preparation for further learning.
91. Active learning describes a process whereby students take greater responsibility for their education, seek out information and are more motivated. Flexible learning encourages the use in a group environment, or as an individual, of structured resource material and may involve negotiation of a learning contract with the teacher. The surface approach to learning is rote based designed to memorise and repeat facts and procedures and is typically assessment driven. The deep approach generates a genuine understanding of the topic which is placed in a wider context.
92. Modern cognitive research is increasingly finding out more about how people learn and as a result asking questions about the way teaching and learning take place at universities. It points inevitably to the virtues of individualized learning and to the creation of customised learning environments that accommodate the diverse learning styles that students possess. For example, a widely used tool in the USA, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) describes four patterns of preferred learning styles: the ES (concrete active), the IS (concrete reflective), the EN (abstract active), and the IN (abstract reflective.) These patterns are not evenly distributed in the general population. The ES pattern is the most frequent, representing 50 percent of high school seniors; the IN pattern is the least frequent, representing about 10 percent. Studies have shown that the largest group of university students consists of concrete active learners, who learn best from concrete experiences that engage their senses, that begin with practice and end with theory, and so on. However, the overwhelming majority of faculty prefer the IN (abstract reflective) pattern, creating an increasing disparity between teacher and learner.
93. Massy and Zemsky2 have identified the following potential for IT in teaching and learning:
94. One must remember not to confuse "contact" with "contact hours": some students will continue to want a traditional collegiate education with all its socialisation or "contact" while others will just want the certification, the "contact [or credit] hours." IT will allow this separation and, moreover, allow the learner to choose either or both. Some fields are not suited to extensive computer mediation, especially those concerned with questions of meaning and value, of culture and philosophy. Nor, even beyond those subjects, will IT-based teaching and learning programs ever substitute fully for human interaction. The most IT can do is extend or enrich the scope of human interchange, as in distance learning or where communication is mediated through computers. What universities will have to judge in the future is how and where that human interaction can be most effectively employed.
95. Information technologies already play an important part in the teaching and learning process but there is enormous potential for making more innovative use of IT in a cost effective way that can enhance the quality of teaching and add variety and excitement to the learning process. Thus it can act as a catalyst of change: promoting active and flexible, rather than passive, learning and engendering a deep, rather than shallow, approach to learning.
96. Course material, whether printed or in computer media form, is already prepared using computers (word processing was for most people their first contact with a PC). Eventually considerable material, much of it in multi-media, will be available over the network or on CD-ROM and it will easily be possible to generate suitable course material for students that brings together a lecturer's notes, journal articles, photographs and images, chapters from textbooks, etc., to a single printed volume or it can be enhanced by the inclusion of video footage, computer simulation, etc., into a single computer package.
97. Lectures and demonstrations can be broadcast to other institutions or sites within a university. To a limited extent remote students can interact with the lecturer (the "sage on the stage") over broadband network links. Computer driven presentations, if suitably displayed, can be used to enhance lectures; particularly to large groups.
98. Tutorials can be supplemented by computer courseware that can be studied off-line or collaboratively over the network with other students and the involvement of a tutor acting as a "guide on the side".
99. The pressures on space, teaching time and facilities such as laboratories and libraries mean that alternatives to primarily campus based teaching and learning need to be developed. There are now many more mature students in the system and overseas students are of increasing importance to many higher education institutions. Many students, although nominally full time, are under economic pressures and have to seek part-time employment. These factors call for a more flexible approach to teaching and learning. The goal is to deliver the total learning experience to students both on campus and off campus (whether locally, regionally or even abroad) and to provide it in parallel with conventional teaching methods, such as seminars, tutorials, laboratory and library access, as well as learn-at-your-own-pace material (open access on demand). At the same time the quality of higher education must not only be maintained but improved.
100. Currently, printed material is the usual way of meeting this demand for more flexible learning but multi-media is evolving as a very powerful tool. The capability to mix text, diagrams and images with video and sound greatly enhances the ability to transmit information meaningfully and developments in virtual reality technology could improve the effectiveness of the approach even further. Modern tools also enable greater selectivity and improved searching of the information available. A well designed multi-media package allows a student to learn at his or her own pace and level; complex concepts are supported by the immediate availability of more elementary presentations. Many students, even if not already fully computer literate, expect, and are at ease with, such material.
101. Interactive courseware is a further development where computer based material is used in place of a tutorial but a lecturer is available, on-line, to guide and facilitate the student.
102. Currently not all Australian universities have specialist facilities for preparing good multi-media courseware, or even conventional computer based teaching material. However, the preparation of such material will get easier and require less expensive and sophisticated hardware and software. Such material needs to be offered in modular form so that tailored courseware can be created quickly and conveniently aimed at the needs of individual groups of students: thus a "textbook" can be put together that more exactly meets the needs of a particular course.
103. There are a number of developments in this area already within the sector and many courses (particularly foundation modules) are being developed using these techniques in the USA and the UK. In Australia some interesting developments have taken place under the aegis of the Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching (CAUT). There is clearly scope for the larger scale development and greater use of multi-media collaborative courseware such as that produced by the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) initiative in the UK and CUPLE in the USA.
104. Electronic courseware can be made available from a server to students, whether on campus or remotely either on-line or through an off-line media such as CD-ROM, as appropriate. It is reasonable to expect the capacity of CD-ROM to increase within the next five years and alternative storage media, such as magnetic optical devices, to be developed. However, this means of distribution is less suitable for material that becomes out-dated within a period of about one year.
105. Computer based material does not replace books or journals any more than the radio replaces newspapers, or electronic mail the postal service, but it does have the potential to meet the needs of staff and students faced with the pressures described above.
106. The immediate problem is for the Australian higher education community to gain more experience in the development of such courseware and to fully understand the potential of the technology. There is a need to identify standard toolsets and delivery platforms which maximise portability but retain sufficient diversity to meet the needs of specialist disciplines. Where appropriate such material could include automated assessment of the students' understanding for internal or more formal examination purposes. Additional factors include copyright implications, how such information will be evaluated in peer review and research assessment, and how authors of electronic "text book "material can be rewarded. The issues of how such courseware can be advertised, circulated and kept up-to-date, particularly to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, are already being considered by many institutions.
107. Computer based courseware can be delivered off line at present, in the form of diskettes or CD-ROM, or on-line over network links. Although the technology is available to do this, suitable workstations, peripherals and network bandwidth are expensive and not widely available.
108. Recent trends have been for manufacturers to hold the price constant for personal workstations but continually improve their performance. This improvement is across the board: CPU power, memory, disk space, VDU quality. Although there are some signs that the basic entry level price will fall in real terms while functionality continues to increase, this may still be too expensive for many students. Institutions will therefore continue to need to equip computer laboratories with workstations at least in the short term. The investment would need to be considerable. Within the medium term of the next five to ten years widespread availability of multi-media PCs can be assumed: they will become standard consumer items to which many perhaps, if not most, students will have ready access. There are already clear signs that more and more students now own or have ready access to their own PCs. There will, however, be increased need for the provision of access points to the network both on and off-campus in order to access information resources and courseware. Access on campus might be through docking stations strategically located around the campus to meet the needs of students. Off-campus access might be through the universities' own modem pools or through third party service providers such as Open Net.
109. The delivery of multi-media courseware over the network requires high bandwidth: typically a dedicated 3Mbps to 4Mbps to the workstation and up to 10Mbps for the most demanding applications.
110. Current Ethernet LANs do not deliver this. Modern hub-based LANs, particularly where UTP level 5 cable is used with a fibre-based backbone, have the potential to deliver such bandwidth locally. The availability of suitable bandwidth, at reasonable costs, with the appropriate protocols (ATM is widely regarded as the most promising) off campus to the home or workplace, or local facility such as public libraries, is more difficult to predict. The pace at which it might happen, and how widespread such provision may be, is uncertain.
111. Cable TV is the most promising vehicle for very high bandwidth to the home but is unlikely to be a major player outside urban areas within the next ten years. The degree to which the delivery of such bandwidth to the home, with a suitable technology (i.e. not just "piped" TV), is a primary objective of such companies is unclear. The commercial potential of education delivered to the home is likely to be limited in comparison with entertainment, information services, home shopping and banking etc; nonetheless real revenue earning opportunities exist.
112. Similarly video-on-demand is a technology which would make considerable bandwidth available into the house but has limited outgoing bandwidth.
113. ISDN is a widely available technology, internationally as well as within Australia, but of limited bandwidth (64Kbps, although multiple channels are available). Although ISDN has been around for many years an unhelpful tariff structure has limited its popularity. ISDN supports voice, data and compressed video. It is therefore not capable of supporting interactive multimedia but may have some potential because of its widespread availability in Australia and internationally for delivering computer based courseware.
114. The implications for higher education can be profound. The use of technology can be a financially viable solution of many of the issues facing higher education described in the introduction to this paper by making it more effective and more efficient.
115. Some commentators see the impact of IT on education being as important a watershed as the invention of writing or the printing press. They point to a number of stages in the history of education which has developed from the verbal transmission of knowledge in ancient times, through the use of writing to transmit information in medieval times, to the printed word in modern times. We are now entering the Information Age which is characterised by the electronic transmission of information. In ancient and medieval times, education was largely one on one and in small groups. The Industrial Revolution with its need to educate large numbers of people in basic skills to operate machines and participate in commercial life, led to mass education and found the large group method of teaching most economical. Information Technology appears to have the potential to individualise education and to provide it at any time and in any place and in so doing to improve its quality and efficiency in many respects.
116. Others believe that the use of technology can improve education, but add that it is certainly no "quick fix" to the problem. Yet others are of the view that technology by itself does not solve any problem, increase quality or decrease cost. They apply to education the idea of "Re-engineering". It is necessary to rethink the whole system without any preconceived ideas, integrating technology into the new system in order to increase efficiency, effectiveness and, above all, quality while decreasing overall costs.
117. Certainly, the integration of IT has the potential to change the way in which courses are offered and a radical re-definition of the way in which teaching and learning take place.
1. The preparation of, and access to, multimedia off-line and on-line teaching material to provide a more flexible learning experience to students.
2. Fostering the adoption of standards for materials in this area.
3. The preparation of electronic text book and research material. Issues here include familiarisation with the technology, copyright, advertisement and dissemination, up-dating, research assessment and remuneration.
4. Encouraging increased collaboration within the sector and the development of centres of expertise.
5. Ensuring there is an adequate provision of suitably configured multimedia workstations.
6. The reach of networks of adequate bandwidth within the campus and to the home.
118. There are ways in which IT can aid the process and administration of research across the sector.
119. Improved interworking of office systems, including administrative systems and multimedia communication, is an important goal; especially tools to facilitate co-authoring and electronic project management. All disciplines will eventually establish electronic "networks" for the rapid dissemination of research results, especially in fast moving or time critical areas.
120. Much research, especially in the physical sciences, involves the use of scarce resources such as specialist laboratories or equipment (e.g. high-powered computers, telescopes, particle accelerators, flumes and wind tunnels). It will be possible using the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) to increase the involvement of remote research workers and students in such experimentation by providing high quality real time, interactive video and voice connections. Remote research workers will also be able to discuss and manipulate complex images (e.g. rare documents; protein molecules) in real time using video and voice linked to a common application program.
121. Collecting data is often very expensive whereas the cost of analysing existing data is falling and more powerful computing techniques are continually becoming available. Access to databases of results from past research is therefore important. This leads to the concept of data mining but raises issues of quality assurance and validation of data.
122. Other research and development work requires time-consuming and complex design experiments (e.g., ergonomics, stress analysis of materials and many other areas of engineering) or requires experiments with hazardous materials or environments (e.g. nuclear energy and some branches of chemistry, biochemistry and medicine). There is a considerable economic benefit to industry in being able to speed up the process of bringing products to market through the use of improved modelling techniques (not just faster computer processing). Virtual Reality in particular, has considerable potential to improve the representation of experiments, whether through enhanced 3-D imaging and manipulation or immersive VR involving tactile as well as visual input/output.
123. The concepts of the virtual library and greater access to research articles on-line are explained in the following section. These initiatives are designed to facilitate literature searches and hence speed up the search for research information. Complex keyword linking will also be possible and immediate access to cited or citing papers will be possible. It will be possible to construct complex search clauses (as is currently possible using SQL on relational databases) to locate relevant materials. The usefulness of these searching and retrieval techniques will increase as the body of on-line material grows.
124. The innovative use of IT, underpinned by appropriate network links, will be an important tool in improving the nation's competitiveness and quality of life, especially continuing to improve the collaboration between industry and higher education.
Issues associated with the application of IT to research
1. Increased use of IT techniques such as virtual reality, for research and teaching; especially research involving hazardous environments or utilising scarce or expensive resources.
2. The provision of national and international broadband networks for collaborative research and access to scarce facilities.
3. The provision of high quality data banks as a source for data mining based research techniques.
4. Encouraging the opportunities for enhanced collaboration with industry.
125. The amount of information available in digital form is increasing significantly. This is partly because the bulk of textual information currently being produced is in digital form and partly due to the retrospective digitisation programmes for books and journals. In tandem with this, more multimedia information is being produced in digital form. This will mean that much of the information that is currently held in, or obtained from libraries, will be available through personal computers or workstations over networks.
126. More diverse information services, for example newspapers, magazines and television documentaries, are also likely to be made available in digitised form.
127. AARNet and other networks will facilitate access to this information from both libraries and end users. Fundamental changes can be expected in the following areas:
128. Document Delivery: A major benefit of AARNet to libraries will be in the area of document delivery. Both libraries and end users will be able to access the full text of journal articles over the network and transfer them from one place to another and this will be fundamental to universities who are moving from a holding strategy to an access strategy. Once journal articles and associated images can be delivered over the network, users will cease to care about the actual location of the document and will have access to resources which far outstrip those available in their own local libraries.
129. Electronic Publishing: The network will offer new opportunities for publishing utilising colour and high resolution images and linking multimedia data. Published papers could be linked with information in electronic form, either on disk or network servers, and even with full motion video. Papers can also be cross referenced to cited, and citing, material. Digital publications could also allow users to interact with the information provided.
130. Access to Information Sources: There is a wealth of information in information centres, museums, archives and libraries that is currently under-exploited and in some cases uncatalogued. There would be scope to exploit such resources and provide users with access to many large and diverse specialist collections across Australia.
131. Access to Learning Materials: The Network will enable the delivery of learning materials in a range of formats to support both students and teachers. Users will be able to select those elements that are relevant to their own needs and put together a personalised curriculum. This will also open up possibilities for distance learning as students will not need to be on campus to access information.
132. In parallel, advances in a range of complementary technologies offer the potential to simplify the publishing process and revolutionise its economics, particularly for short-run publications. It will be possible to create and print electronic documents without any of the intermediate stages required by offset; to bring together electronic documents from a variety of sources, including geographically dispersed databases; and to warehouse them electronically ready for recall and printing on demand. Such developments open up a wide range of possibilities:
133. In the longer-term, the role of the academic publisher itself may be questioned. It is possible to envisage, within the next ten years a national or even international document base, into which academics place articles or "contributions" to textbooks. Making material available could be left to academics and subsequent peer review processes could improve quality and add "kite marks" to indicate relevance and excellence. Publishers might have to concentrate on selling their traditional editing, layout and marketing skills to authors wishing to ensure that their electronic publications are attractive. They might act as agents on behalf of academics, or as suppliers of specialist bibliographic services and search and retrieval software.
134. The corporate and strategic implications of the technology are only just beginning to be addressed in most Australian universities. However, projects in the UK and the US have shown how such technology can be successfully exploited within higher education. Commercial printing companies are investing heavily in digital production printers as a means of streamlining their production processes. Many universities are also buying electronic demand printers to complement their investment in networking and databases.
Issues associated with the application of IT to information resources
1. The change in emphasis from libraries as collection-based to access-based information services.
2. Proving the enabling technology for electronic information delivery such as multi-media electronic journals and improved navigation tools.
3. Establishing the necessary cultural change among service providers and users.
4. Establishing common interfaces and standards for information access.
5. Publishing issues related to copyrighting, quality assurance and remunerating authors of electronic information.
135. It is important for universities to develop links with external bodies.
136. Historically, many Universities have been strongly rooted within the local community. It is likely that over the next ten years links between universities and the local community will strengthen, for a number of reasons. Firstly, as finance for student support falls, institutions will increasingly draw their students from the local population. In addition, the concept of life-long education will become more prevalent, as employees will be required to update their skills and qualifications periodically. Employers will look to local universities to provide much of this training. Whilst this will provide a number of benefits to universities, such as a wider customer base and additional revenue, it will also mean that universities will have to become more responsive to customer needs in the way in which courses are shaped. Some universities will look further afield and seek to establish a regional, national or even international role. Information technology will help by enabling universities to provide more off-site teaching and courses tailored to suit individual needs.
137. In addition to their traditional educational role, universities could become "centres of expertise" whose intellectual resources could be drawn upon (at a cost) by local, national and even international businesses. This development could be encouraged, for example, by linking AARNet to Technology Parks.
138. As competition for students becomes more intensive, universities will look for new marketing opportunities. The World-Wide-Web (WWW) can provide a user friendly, interactive guide to institutions, with details of courses offered, information on the surrounding areas, and so forth. WWW can be accessed via the Internet, thus making such information readily available to the many schools and commercial organisations.
139. There are thus good reasons for wishing to see other bodies, such as schools, companies and other external organisations, connecting to AARNet. Network connections would be a very tangible way of cementing links between universities and the community. Pilot schemes are already in place to link schools and libraries with AARNet. Such links must be developed with caution. Universities cannot subsidise other sectors, and there is a limit to the expansion that would be possible without completely redesigning the network. AARNet does not constitute the "Information Superhighway" for Australia, nor could it be developed incrementally into one. It would be more sensible to regard the Australian information superhighway as comprising a series of collaborating networks of which AARNet would be one. However, it is appropriate to link external organisations directly to AARNet where there would be clear benefit to the higher education and research communities, especially where such connection makes economic sense. In such situations, levying charges at full economic cost will fund the appropriate extra capacity to cope with modest extra traffic.
140. Academics regard themselves as part of an international community, and there are many examples of successful cross-national collaboration. Good international networking links play an important part in fostering such co-operation, but there is a clear need to increase understanding of the cost/benefit implications of upgrading these links. Alternative approaches, such as building up caching mechanisms so as to limit the load on international lines, may be more cost-effective than simply increasing bandwidth in isolation. However, the current charging structure for AARNet and the establishment of regional networks appear to preclude any advantage to be gained from caching mechanisms except at the regional level.
Issues associated with external limks
1. Universities must be able to make full use of their network links including links outside the higher education community; especially industry.
2. Telecommunications are becoming an increasingly important means of communication (e.g. the information superhighway) and institutions must fully exploit them.
3. International networking is becoming increasingly expensive and mechanisms must be investigated to find cost effective ways of minimising such traffic and of establishing ways of maximising value for money.
141. Although the preceding chapters have concentrated on distance learning and the "virtual campus" it is not expected that there will be a significant reduction on the pressures facing the physical resources of an institution. The effective management of the institution as a whole will continue to be very challenging. This section considers the IT related opportunities in this area.
142. Over the next ten years IT will become a pervasive factor in the management of a campus and will impact on all aspects of the running of institutions, from the management and administration of the institution to controlling its physical resources. A number of areas where the exploitation of information systems and technology are likely to be particularly beneficial are examined in this chapter.
143. The use of Smart cards and other active devices are key in this area. These can allow access to buildings 24 hours per day without additional staff resources. Such systems monitor who are using facilities and, coupled with person detectors and dial-up surveillance (using the network), can reduce burglaries and vandalism.
144. Computer system security has become a much larger problem since the move from mainframe to distributed systems. Inappropriate access to the increasing amounts of sensitive data, especially financial and personal data, that are being stored on institution networks is cause for concern. There has been a lack of progress in work to alleviate these security fears. A fail-safe authentication system that allows only those with authority to access sensitive data would allow more data to be made available on the network.
145. The use of systems to control and minimise energy consumption could provide large savings for institutions. Although in some of the older institutions with outdated systems and buildings this may prove too costly, all new = buildings can be designed with energy efficient systems utilising a single infrastructure to handle voice, data = and environmental controls. Heating, water and lighting can all be controlled in this way. Remote sensing will mean that one person could be in charge of the monitoring and analysis of environmental controls over multiple sites of a campus.
146. Health and safety issues could also be dealt with centrally e.g. risk analysis, data on safety checks. In emergencies, person sensors would be an efficient means of ensuring buildings were empty; they can also be used to automatically control room and corridor lighting.
147. Smart cards could also be put to use as "plastic money" by staff and students. This could include buying items at on-campus shops, use of telephones and photocopiers, library access and loans and could even be extended to the administration of student loans.
148. The CASMAC initiative is planned to provide management information systems in areas such as finance, human resources, estates and decision support systems.
149. As more and more information becomes available electronically there is a need to ensure that it is structured at appropriate levels of detail to meet the needs of different users. Databases of institutions' capabilities could be made available for access to many audiences. Software to scan information against complex profiles and keyword analysis systems are available and should be evaluated.
150. Systems to deal with timetabling and room allocation are essential as modularisation of courses increases. Pressure on computing laboratories to stay open all hours could be alleviated if information about free PCs elsewhere on site was easily attainable via monitors for example.
151. The network also has great potential to improve complex communication issues involved with student admissions and clearance and statistical records.
152. Universities these days have a range of resources such a conferencing and training facilities to offer. Systems to help co-ordinate booking etc. are already available and should be put to use.
153. Many of the ideas described above are not new; indeed commercial systems addressing many of these issues are available. A clear business case is needed before such ideas can be more widely adopted, but they offer significant potential for saving time and money if well thought out and implemented as part of an institution's overall strategic plan. Institutions are unlikely to invest in anything that has not been proven and so a potential role for the SCIR could be to demonstrate where technology has a role to play and then obtain funds to pilot projects and disseminate results to ensure confidence. The institution's internal network infrastructure will be a key component which many of these systems will rely on. This underlines how essential it is that the upkeep of the network is seen as a high priority in institutions.
Issues associated with the "virtual campus"
1. Use of IT to improve security and access controls on the campus; including surveillance monitoring.
2. The need for improved data security and authentication tools.
3. Integration of possible smart card applications such as access, library use and plastic money.
4. Integration of infrastructure applications such as voice and data networking and environmental control systems.
5. Use of IT tools for handling time tabling, room allocation and maximising the utilisation of scarce resources.
6. Improved integration of existing management information systems to avoid duplication of effort (e.g. entering data more than once), establish clear data ownership responsibility and provide concise and relevant data to aid executive decision making.
154. The picture is painted of a community making increasingly greater use of network links and electronic information to supplement existing methods of teaching, learning, research and management.
155. Students will be able to study at home and at the workplace using electronic multimedia information provided off-line (e.g. CD-ROM) and over the network. Interactive, tutorial type, guidance will also be possible over the network. Eventually a wealth of high quality information will be available on-line; far more than even the largest university library could carry and increasingly this information will be multimedia. The big problems are related to issues such as copyright, navigation tools and ease of use as well as technology, financial and cultural considerations. The potential benefits in reducing loading on facilities such as lecture theatres, laboratories and libraries are, however, enormous. There is scope both to improve the quality of the learning process and make access to information and teaching material more widespread outside the campus.
156. It is important that Australian universities take full advantage of the rapidly changing world of networking and that the "reach" of AARNet is expanded, whether through direct connections or peer network links, at a suitable bandwidth. This will require a clear sense of direction, and a flexible policy for dial-up access, ISDN, private circuits, as well as Metropolitan Area Networks and other forms of AARNet access. Universities will continue to build suitable network links with local and regional bodies and will benefit from a comprehensive broadband national network. Broadband international network links ar unlikely to become widely available within the next fe years due to the high cost and, in some cases, the unwillingness of Public Network Operators (PNOs) to provide links.
156. Information Systems will play an increasing role in the management of institutions to control access, security, lighting, heating, resource allocation as well as conventional management information systems. In particular, access to resources such as laboratories and the library can be made available out-of-hours withou compromising security.
157. In conclusion there is considerable potential through the development of existing information technologies to improve the quality of the learning experience, enhance collaborative research and teach more students without increasing the running costs of institutions.
158. The issues described in this paper will have a profound effect on the future of higher education. Such changes will not be cheap to implement and it is obviously necessary to ensure universities and the central funding bodies are in a position to make judgements in the knowledge of financial consequences as well as on the basis of an understanding of technological developments and possibilities. Such financial modelling will not be easy but is necessary. There is a need to commission studies examining the impact on universities, which will vary greatly according to their size, geographical disposition, student mix, subjects taught, importance and type of research carried out, income sources and the nature of their external links, as well as many other factors.
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