ABSTRACT
SUMMARY The potential of new learning and networking technologies, allied to distributed multimedia systems, will transform flexible learning in the next decade. This raises disconcerting questions for educators.
As educators we find ourselves in a unique period of transition. How will the current generation of educators, products of a print-based generation, cope when required to teach in ways in which they themselves have not been taught? What will be the effects on current models of learning and on the educator’s role, of a shift from the book (a constant, stabilised medium, which is ordered, linear, hierarchical and standardised) to the computer interface (a dynamic medium, which is exploratory, multidimensional, anarchic and comparatively unregulated)? What happens when a curriculum based on enduring truths and academic authority moves to one in which the most trustworthy data is the most recent? This chapter considers the likely effects of learning technologies that are currently being adopted in higher education. From a postmodernist perspective of education it argues that a new paradigm of learning is likely to be ushered in through the advent of advanced learning technologies and that this paradigm will have its most noticeable impact in flexible learning. The chapter seeks to encourage debate of an educational theory and practice for a new generation of online learners in an information society.
