ABSTRACT
Global-Wise, Where are we? With only four years to go before the end of the post-Dearing decade, it has to be said that we are far from reaching the point at which we can sit back and be satisfied; a situation which has recently been confirmed in the Government White Paper (DFES 2003) on the future of UK higher education, where the current lack of collaboration between institutions is highlighted as a specific failing (Section 1.19). The competitive market in which UK post compulsory education finds itself remains stubbornly localised, intense rivalry between institutions for student recruitment being far more the order of the day than a collective defence against global competition. This is partly, perhaps principally, because of doubts about how well stocked the supposed treasure chest actually is. Computers are certainly used more for learning and teaching in today’s universities and further education colleges than they were in 1997, but not to the extent expected by Dearing, and even less as global distance-learning tools. A glance at the programmes and proceedings of conferences concerned with post compulsory education published over the last few years reveals an inexorable rise in the number of contributions related to the use of the Internet as a teaching and learning facility, either as an information resource, or used interactively in conjunction with a physical classroom, or – less commonly – to replace a physical presence entirely: ALT conference programmes are prime examples (Jacobs, 2001). Nor can it be doubted that the Internet offers unparalleled mass educational opportunities of which no previous age could hardly have conceived. So it is not surprising if, since even well before Dearing, its obvious advantages have regularly been acknowledged and described in countless books, articles, papers, reports, political pronouncements, and everywhere in the medium itself. In spite of this, pick-and-mix predictions of the 1990s, in which vast cohorts of UK students would be accumulating transferable credits by remotely studying a flexible portfolio of modules at different institutions, even Europe-wide and beyond, have still not materialised (and this in the face of certain powerful European Union initiatives in that direction).
