ABSTRACT
Allison Littlejohn and Susi Peacock In 1997 the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE) articulated a vision that foresaw students connecting to powerful academic networks via small portable personal computers. It was envisaged that learning support environments would allow students flexible access to distributed resources, which would promote collaboration and dialogue. Over this period we have seen significant improvements in infrastructure, connectivity and access to computers. The infrastructure is now largely in place but technology in teaching is not ubiquitous and the vision is far from being realised (Beetham, Jones & Gornall, 2001). This is because technological issues have in the main been easier to solve than the more complex social, cultural and organisational issues involved with mainstreaming technology in learning and teaching. As Kenneth Green, Director of the Campus Computing Project in the United States observed:
The campus community’s major technology challenges involve human factors – assisting students and faculty to make effective use of new technologies in ways that support teaching, learning, instruction and scholarship (Green, 1999).
