ABSTRACT
Most students, parents and academics are likely to agree – give or take a few whistles and bells – that the traditional defining moments of a university or college education encompass a mixture of ‘fixed’ and ‘fluid’ experiences. The fixed moments embrace (at their best) student attendance at lectures and seminars under the tutelage of excellent teachers, who set demanding assignments that they later discuss to draw out connections and links, which enrich and accelerate the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. The portfolio of higher education moments also include valuable but more fluid encounters (at their best):
• time for reflection and sharing discoveries with peers; • the pleasure of life in a community that is generally insulated from
worldly cares and which may never be experienced again;
Traditional and distance-education approaches have distinctive benefits when they are well implemented. In this chapter, Haywood highlights the trade-offs that will need to be made between what he calls the ‘defining moments’ in each approach: a ‘richness’ in educational experience nurtured in spatially-based institutions, and the ‘reach’ and convenience of distance learning. He explores the actual nature of these defining moments and argues for a realistic appraisal of the past in order to allow for the development of policies and practices that successfully mix the best of traditional and new-media approaches.
