"A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation" - Edmund Burke, 1729-1797
In this chapter, traditional agricultural and natural resource management education is challenged from the viewpoint of learning. Electronic communication technologies are presented as a bridge between LDCs and MDCs and as a means of increasing overall quality of, and access to education.
The history of agricultural education introduced in Chapter 6 highlights progressive changes in teaching and extension. In many ways, these reflect the general changes that have occurred in higher education in more developed countries (MDC) over the past 200 years. In the USA at the turn of this century less than one percent of the population attended college - something slightly over 200,000 students. By the end of the Second World War, the number of undergraduates had risen to 1.4 million and in 1994 exceeded 13 million. In catering for such change, institutions have necessarily modified their approaches to teaching. This same scenario has applied, in general terms, to universities in both MDCs and less developed countries (LDC).
Initially agricultural education focused on the preparation of leaders and technicians. In both cases residency was a requirement to enculture students with the values of the establishment. This approach effectively determined curricula and modes of delivery with new technologies for delivery being absorbed to further the enculturation process. Increasing numbers of students necessarily led to teaching being based on a lecture system as a simple expediency to allow the experience and knowledge of lecturers to be shared with the greatest possible numbers of students. This approach in agricultural and other education remains the common focus of educational institutions today.
In LDCs, agricultural and natural resource management education has followed patterns of MDCs. Even those countries with relatively new systems have adopted an approach based around lectures by permanently employed lecturing staff. Today, new technologies in communication allow the imparting of information and knowledge more efficiently than the lecturing approach by itself. Yet as described in Chapter 8, such technologies are most likely to be thought of as adjuncts to existing systems and adapted to further the central pedagogical model based on lecturing. In this way, tele-lecturing or video-conferencing is commonly conceived as a simple means of spreading the words of the lecturer to a wider audience. While there is obvious merit in the employment of such new technologies, it may now be appropriate to ask whether such an approach is improving the learning environment for students.
Definitions of learning may well be changing - we are all Learning About Learning. Differing opinions can be easily elicited within institutions about the knowledge which individual students must learn. In an environment of rapidly expanding knowledge and a quantum of knowledge in every subject area which exceeds the teaching time available, it is now unrealistic to cling to traditional views of the content and expected outcomes of undergraduate study. The view that an undergraduate education provides a sound understanding of a body of knowledge or even an adequate preparation for a career may be outmoded. Employers are beginning to recognize that the essence of a graduate is a person who has acquired essential skills including communication, analytical thinking, conceptual ability and reasoning, combined with sufficient knowledge to access information as required.
| Learning About Learning
Is our definition of learning changing? And if so, why? What now constitutes the learning we are seeking - e.g. is it mastery of a body of knowledge, critical thinking ability, communications skill, preparation for a career or useful life, the ability to find needed information, the ability to interact with others? If colleges and universities themselves change in response to society's definition of learning how are our institutions responding to today's meaning of the word? Does our current teaching infrastructure, with its emphasis on the traditional classroom, provide an effective base to serve a newly defined view of learning? Twigg (1995) |
Large employers of agricultural graduates, such as banks engaged in lending to agriculture, now recognize that the best graduates that they can engage are those who have a distinct capacity to continue to learn. They recognize the continuing role of education in the lives of all professionals and no longer expect that an individual can have mastered the content of any discipline in a three or four year undergraduate program. Such an approach is similar across the professions. If courses are still designed on the past assumption of producing a graduate who has mastered the knowledge of a field, major shifts in curricula and teaching must take place in order to meet the needs of a changed environment for graduates. Changes have occurred throughout society yet their implications beyond simple applications to teaching may not have been made clear to those delivering educational programs within institutions.
At the same time as technology is changing, the profile of students engaging in formal education has also changed significantly. General trends across MDCs indicate a declining percentage of undergraduates in their late teens and early twenties. The traditional view of an undergraduate of a young adult living in university residence engaged in full-time education has been estimated to constitute less than one half of students engaging in higher education in MDCs. Mature students, who often engage in part time education, have created new demands on educational institutions. This is a consequence of better informed purchasers of educational services associated with the wider life-experience of mature students. The service orientation of education is reinforced by the views of such students who demand delivery in educational and personal terms as distinct from traditional indicators more easily demonstrated by prestigious institutions, such as staff qualifications, class size, research grants, and student recreational facilities. This new element of consumer choice appears to cross boundaries of tradition and prestige, particularly in that segment in MDCs which focuses on the gaining of knowledge and information from education. The traditional lecture-based approach to teaching may not, under this circumstance provide the most appropriate learning environment. This is a major market shift, from a supply-driven (technology-push) approach of teaching students about science and the role of technology to one of learning-pull in which students exercise choice and demand.
The timing of education is also in flux. Global economic changes have removed the concept of whole-of-life employment and introduced the concept of an individual graduate's employability and flexibility to move to new careers. We are now conditioned to believe that new graduates should expect to move from employer to employer through their careers yet we have not all taken the step of realizing that this implies changes in careers in addition to changes in employer. The rapid rise in continuing education and retraining which arises from this realization, has yet to be recognized by the majority of higher education institutions including those concerned with agriculture and natural resource management. One might postulate shifts in career for a graduate today from farm advisory services, to private consulting, to agribusiness advice, to on-farm environmental management - diverse and to some, seemingly conflicting, career changes - yet all conceivable within the changing employment environment which awaits today's graduates. Whole-of-life learning is now a necessity for a serious professional in natural resource management.
The challenge for educational institutions is to prepare students for whole-of-life learning and to instill an appropriate ethic to engage in such learning. Those institutions which recognize the need to instill and service such an ethic are beginning to understand the implications this has in terms of teaching and creation of appropriate learning environments. Yet the composition skills represented in most teaching faculties is one of the major management challenges facing such institutions and in effect, can create an inertia against rapid change in the creation of new learning environments.
The changing demand for education is reflected in the places where knowledge is gained. Educational institutions can no longer claim any monopoly on accredited learning conducted within their own campuses. Accreditation, often by organizations separate from teaching institutions such as professional bodies, applies to workplace learning, home study, and a variety of other technology-based systems - especially in the USA. Distance education has extended the classroom beyond traditional boundaries and indeed across the globe. The university cannot be viewed solely as a physical location; if the physical location has importance, it may as a venue for short intensive and socially oriented adjuncts to learning. The learning environment spans that of the students and the information imparted by those responsible for managing the learning environment - it includes the computer link to remote homes and offices, discussion groups and, many may simply conceive the main campus as an administrative location. New Tools of Learning are needed to participate in this information revolution.
| Tools of Learning
New visualization tools give us capabilities in addition to text in order to imagine, analyze, to communicate. Powerful creative tools are available to produce newsletters, design homes and offices, create music. Electronic communications tools are creating global communities; computing and networking are shattering and reshaping individual jobs and entire industries. Are our colleges and universities preparing graduates ... ? How many of our faculty can use these tools skillfully themselves? Twigg (1995) |
As we understand more about the process of learning, we are in a position to create learning environments that suit individual learning requirements and which can accommodate the increasingly diverse learning styles of students. The ubiquitous experience of parents and teachers of students who fail to realize their full potential in traditional lecture-based systems may in fact be a recognition of the differing learning styles of individual students. Traditional lecture-based systems are strongly oriented to verbal and mathematical logic, not the least in the traditional approaches to agricultural education. Those persons who learn more efficiently in environments where knowledge is presented in spatial or in personal terms may be under-serviced by traditional agricultural education - witness the students who comprehend field explanations of concepts much faster than they do lecture-based explanation. They may also represent a resource in terms of a less mechanistic approach to life that is important in a broader definition of natural resource management. Such Preferred Learning Styles may also be reflected in psychological profiles.
| Preferred Learning Styles
Another widely used tool, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has contributed to our understanding of individual differences in the learning process. The MBTI describes four patterns of preferred learning styles: The ES (concrete active), the IS (concrete reflective), the EN (abstract active), and the IN (abstractive reflective). These patterns are not evenly distributed in the general population. The ES pattern is the most frequent, representing 50% of high school seniors; the IN is the least frequent representing about 10%. Recent studies have shown that the largest group of college 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. As Charles Schroder recently pointed out in Change magazine, the overwhelming majority of college faculty prefer the IN (abstract reflective) pattern creating an increasing disparity between teacher and learner. How many of our institutions are aware of the results of this important research and are moving to customize their courses? How can our faculty respond to diverse learning patterns when their primary pedagogy consists of classroom lecture? Twigg (1995) |
The traditional system of agricultural education is already changing. Fueled by a declining role of agriculture in the economies and minds of decision-makers in most of the MDCs, agricultural education has experienced a decline in popularity. A parallel trend in LDCs arises from investments and hence incentives being placed firmly in favor of new industries as distinct from agriculture which is perceived to be an existing industry and one which is tied to difficult social issues. The role of information technology is critical to such changes and provides a mechanism to catalyze the shift between agricultural education, as it has been traditional conceived, towards natural resource management education while retaining utility to commercial interests.
Information technology now makes it possible to reconsider approaches to such education. In the past while distance education was offered, initially through the form of correspondence study, it could not be considered to be the major form of learning. This situation has now changed with technology allowing instruction to be offered to students in any place at any time, and indeed for those students to be persons from a range of backgrounds, not necessarily possessing the prerequisites previously considered essential to enter courses. In general terms, knowledge about the way in which students learn in this new information environment allows us to plan for future mechanisms which service the needs of natural resource management education. However, we have not seen significant changes in the servicing of these needs, presumably because we are tied to traditional modes of delivery.
Our systems have been based mainly on servicing the needs of a student population resident or attending the university on a daily basis, and on the role of teaching. In addition, understanding a body of prescribed knowledge was considered to be the best basis for preparation for life and career. This may have been an effective mechanism in the past. However, the approach in which knowledge generated through research conducted by faculty staff who then deliver it to students solely through lectures, may now be limiting student learning opportunities. The challenge to individual lecturers is significant, and one which requires support in the period of adjustment and in the schooling of new lecturers to accommodate new technologies and new approaches to learning. Faculty staff need to understand the biochemistry of the New Student Body.
Today's students express frustration with the rigidity of university systems and institutional unwillingness to acknowledge the benefits and reality of engaging in education and work experience simultaneously. Dissatisfaction is also evident with traditional time-based structures which create personal inefficiencies in the use of time across the year. Added to these frustrations are those of routine university life, such as one hour classes scattered randomly through the week, difficulties in car parking, lecturers who cannot always be at the cutting edge of their fields, and subject entry criteria which provide virtually no acknowledgment of one's previous knowledge and experience. Such issues are raised across both MDCs and LDCs and must be added to those listed in Chapters 4 and 6.
| The New Student Body
Today's student population [in the USA] is characterized by heterogeneity: in age (only 43% are under age 25), sex (women account for nearly 55% of all undergraduates), ethnicity (more than one student in six is not white) and economic means (students from all socio-economic classes attend college). Now that approximately 14 million students attend college, American higher education is a mass phenomenon. Residential education alone simply cannot serve the needs of today's students: it is too expensive and is often inappropriate. Clearly residential education remains a suitable option for the minority of college students who match the pre-1960's profile. But for the millions of working adults who have already experienced their own rites of passage as they entered adulthood, all-night bull sessions in dormitories, pep rallies and football somehow lack in appeal. Twigg (1995) |
If teaching-based instruction is inherently limited by the preferred learning modes of individual students, it may also be possible that the preferred learning approach of an individual varies across a lifetime. Experienced professionals seeking continuing education may not prefer teaching-based modes of learning. Certainly a generation growing up with electronic means of accessing information and information linked to entertainment, creates demands which traditional universities in MDCs are already finding difficult to meet.
Changes in student demands are supported by questions about the relevance of educational mode to subsequent life experience. This arises through such questions as - professional employment seems to be based around team assignments and task completion as distinct from memorizing information for re-presentation in a two hour written examination - why then should that approach not be used for part of the educational experience? Rimmington (1996) describes the current model of agricultural science courses as leaving little scope for students to develop their analytical skills and incorporate their own life experience. He introduces the benefits of information technology and in particular, multimedia as an adjunct to traditional teacher-based lecture delivery, while noting that such innovations are essentially improving the efficiency of existing systems rather than providing different or new delivery systems.
Experience with electronic learning indicates that today's students in MDCs prefer to access resources through the World Wide Web rather than through printed media. Learners appear to prefer self-paced, interactive electronic learning activities which are based on well designed electronically deliverable courses. Design of these courses on a modular basis facilitates learning, structuring of courses, and access by persons taking other courses. Modules also provide a basis for continuing-learning programs for both professionals and sub-professionals. Electronic delivery of information also appears to be preferred over linearly available information such as videos and paper-based systems. By digitizing video educational material, learners are able to link to a range of information. An important conceptual element of such new approaches is the central position of the learner in accessing information through such means:
The learner therefore has choice of access to a range of learning resources which can be chosen to suit preferred learning modes and circumstances. The role of academic staff shifts from teaching to one of planning a learning environment, convening activities, and tutoring. While this may imply a reduced role to some, it emphasizes the critical importance of well informed researchers and mentors to facilitate learning processes. In some ways it represents a return to the historical concepts of professors in universities.
Students have increasing power as clients or customers of educational institutions and are already influencing the future of universities. Such a future for universities around the world may be indicated by the electronic offering of the Harvard MBA (Rimmington, 1996). The quality association of the name coupled with electronic access can lead to individual institutions offering those areas in which they excel and have a reputation in conjunction with other institutions with compatible or related offerings. The impact of the Internet is already being felt and institutions would do well to focus on their strentghs - to only Focus on That at Which You Excel.
| Focus on That at Which You Excel
If the constraints of demographics and conventional delivery methods apply, then the current model may be optimal. However, use the Internet and they no longer apply. Consider a system in which there are, for appropriate courses and course elements, no universities as we know them. In their place are independent providers of subject units, others who broke customized courses to suit the needs of individual learners and employers and still others who provide independent assessment of key attributes of people who have completed such programs of study for accreditation purposes. The latter would act for the accreditation bodies of professional institutes. Each of these players could deliver their services on the Internet. Rimmington (1996) |
It is easily argued that such a system removes the social component of education and would lead to a few large providers operating around the world with less scope for the competition which has traditionally been one mechanism for encouraging excellence in universities. However, the outcome may more likely be the accessing of the best courses electronically with local institutions increasing the value of that information through supporting, adding to, and adapting these courses. In other words, an institution which currently offers the full range of subjects necessary for natural resource management courses may choose to shift its investment in, for example, a large number of staff covering all specialties and seek to specialize in specific areas, and make those specialist courses available internationally and to maintain their currency. For areas in which an institution does not excel, courses could be imported or exchanged with other institutions. This would both improve the quality of specialist courses and enable better use of scarce resources.
Collaborative activities and working in teams is possible utilizing Internet. The ability to engage in learning at different times would further widen access to education - thereby addressing a chestnut criticism of higher education. Practical experience in laboratories and field situations could form a continuing component of intensive sessions requiring physical presence, although some skills-based activities could also be prepared for electronically. For example, electronic packages which allow virtual surgery on domestic animals can be used to teach anatomy and surgical skills to an extent, and to introduce moral issues prior to students practicing those skills on real animals.
Rather than spelling the demise of the traditional university, these innovations are likely to allow preservation of excellence in major centers and roles for many institutions in adding local value to current world knowledge. Changes may be perceived as a revolution within institutions whose staff refuse to embrace the opportunity. Nevertheless, these circumstances suggest that those institutions which will be regarded as the great universities of the next century may well be those which seek such opportunities and act quickly. Networks of leading institutions may be expected to work together for students choosing the subjects which make up their courses. In such a world, learners would keep accessing the educational services of the institution throughout their lives. Such a scenario could conceivably make current levels of public funding of university systems seem generous.
Management of agricultural and natural resource management education today offers new challenges. Providing education in a situation of constant real reductions in finances tends to orient management to cost-cutting and borrowing funds from the future. Such borrowing occurs in the form of reduced investment in equipment and maintenance and an increase in the proportion of budget allocated to teaching staff salaries. The problem is not restricted to agricultural faculties.
In countries where income of departments and faculties is tied to student numbers, whether it be through government allocations or student fees, government fiscal policy and market pressures on such income create a new management environment. The seeking of external funds has already added a new dimension. These responses are predictable and correct insofar as they operate within the past paradigm of lecture-based teaching. An alternative, which appears to be being embraced by young and innovative institutions, is to accommodate new technologies for education beyond individual classrooms. Even the terminology of such innovations is curious; extending such education beyond the classroom is in fact not an innovation, but the time-honored practice of outreach or extension common to agricultural education (refer to Chapter 8). However, such distance education is not usually well developed in agricultural or natural resource management courses, possibly as a result of these courses being offered from traditional departments, faculties and institutions.
Requirements for practical instruction, teamwork, laboratory learning and so forth are commonly claimed as a reason for rejecting distance education as a mode of natural resource management education. Such reasons should now be challenged as the technology of distance education and the needs of students have changed. In MDCs, greater numbers of persons gain access to tertiary institutions and in LDCs, higher education appears to be a burgeoning sector. The content, quality and outcomes from undergraduate degrees may need to be reconsidered. Perhaps the role of undergraduate degrees is increasingly one of general education for a larger proportion of communities, and that of postgraduate qualifications a focus for persons gaining mastery over a body of knowledge and specializing where appropriate.
Private sector provision of education, while feared by some in publicly funded systems, is as old as the function of education itself. In recent times, in MDCs, new private providers have entered the market place in response to niche opportunities. It should be instructive to agricultural and natural resource education that two areas where private providers have demonstrated some success are environmental appreciation courses, and vocational training oriented to the provision of skills which lead to employment. Small or new private providers perform a valuable service both in terms of their provision of education and as risk-takers in the assessment of expanding market segments in education which can then be followed by larger, more traditional institutions. Such benefits accrue regardless of perceptions concerning the relative qualities of offerings.
Perhaps there are also lessons for higher education institutions to learn about the use of expensive capital facilities from experience in the efficient use of schools in LDCs. Utilizing such facilities in two or more shifts has provided increased access and better use of capital resources. Improved efficiencies in the use of the most expensive components of agricultural and related education may be an appropriate starting point for managers. In MDCs, the high proportion of budget allocated to staff would suggest that both academic staff and capital items should be used as one focus for the efficiency in education delivery. Once again, the promised benefits of new communication technology would appear to facilitate the allocation of high staff costs to a potentially wider number of students. Alternatively it would allow increased academic quality by marginalizing poor teachers introducing real location-free choices of learning packages. One should also assess the year-round use of capital facilities. Extending the learning year to a full year of intensive use of facilities fits well with a short residential requirements associated with distance education. This does mean that staff need spend more time teaching - in fact good programming could allow better structuring of staff time and hence greater research and teaching efficiency. Such an approach represents a more intensive use of facilities than do Summer Schools and other programs which are often claimed to extend the academic year.
Practical training, and in some cases laboratory activities, may in fact be able to be linked more closely to industry. The inclusion of compulsory practical experience in industry as a component of some agricultural undergraduate qualifications has demonstrated benefits to each of students, employers and education institutions. In management terms, this may increasingly be seen to be the identification of the core activities of education. It is conceivable the core of education does not include ownership of all physical assets required for instruction, or face-to-face teaching as a dominant methodology. If the essence of education is to provide a learning environment and the knowledge and skills consistent with a field of learning, timetabling of staff teaching would focus around those times when students attend intensive courses at the main institution - with staff time being otherwise flexibly allocated to research, supervision and assessment activities.
Changes are occurring in agricultural education which creates both a threat and an opportunity. The threat in those institutions and courses which do not adapt to changing stakeholder requirements is one of declining enrollments and funding and possible absorption within broader faculties, such as a faculty of science and economics. The opportunity as described, relates to conceiving agricultural education as a major subset of natural resource management education and thereby broadening the impact of such education on the general community. The opportunity appears to apply in MDCs where agriculture is increasingly marginalized in both political and urban consciousness terms. It also appears to apply to LDCs where agricultural education often fails to attract appropriate funding when competing with high technology industry development, and perhaps social investments.
In a period of change, it may in fact be easier to adjust to new technologies as part of the general changes occurring in agricultural education - particularly in undergraduate programs. It would appear that higher degrees are the ground for creating broad understanding of the interactions between a range of fields over which a graduate can demonstrate some mastery of knowledge. Higher degrees would also retain their traditional focus for those who wish to specialize in a particular aspect of natural resource management education. Some of the trends being discussed here are summarized in Table 9.1. How realistic are these notions? - the beginnings of an international agricultural and natural resource education system using electronic technologies to create the virtual university are introduced in the next section.
Table 9.1 Past, Present and Future Characteristics of Higher Education
| Past |
Present |
Future |
|---|---|---|
| Lecture-based |
New technology supporting lecture-based learning
|
Lectures available through electronic communication
supported by residential schools |
| Full rounded courses |
Employer demands set skills of graduates - for
example, ability to learn |
Provision of continuing learning service |
| Whole-of-life career |
Career changes |
Need for retraining and continuing learning
|
| University managed accreditation |
Professional body accreditation in some fields
|
Independent accreditation |
| Correspondence learning for disadvantaged |
Distance education available as second-class
alternative |
Distance education as main delivery mode - development
of institutional Business Plans around wide offering of services |
| Agricultural extension separated from education
|
Cost squeezes in both areas |
Integration of education and extension in distance
education |
| Lecturer culture determines learning environment
|
Increased student influence in teaching assessment
|
Range of learning environments available to
suit profiles of students |
| Reasonably well-funded |
Reduced public investment |
Improved efficiencies of delivery |
| Timetable based on lectures |
Timetable based on lectures |
Timetable based around residential schools of
distance education students |
| Low utility of capital resources |
Low utility of capital resources |
Increased efficiency through scheduling for
intensive sessions for more students |
| Bachelors degree a rounded degree |
Bachelors an introductory degree |
Higher degrees for rounding and depth |
| School leavers as students |
Increasing proportion of mature-aged students
|
Students of all ages engaged in continuous and basic learning |
In an era of virtual reality in entertainment, creation of a virtual university should not be difficult to conceive. Forward thinkers, such as those involved in A*DEC (1996) have developed the concept as an alternative to traditional agricultural education. A*DEC, which grew from the AgSat consortium of Land Grant Colleges in the USA has enlarged its focus from satellite technology thereby recognizing that such communication is only one of many modes of offering education at distance. The goals of A*DEC are set out in the organization's strategic plan which calls for it to Ö develop and provide responsive high-quality and economical distance education programs and services to diverse audiences. Primary emphasis is placed on services relating to:
| Enhance Academic Productivity
The following points reflect the forward view of A*DEC:
|
A*DEC aims to be a global competitor engaging in local adaptation and implementation of educational programs. It will combine research, communication and instructional capacities to provide services at any time and any place via a range of services including Internet, audio conferences, video tapes, satellites and printed publications. The organization seeks to develop an international reputation for degree programs, extension, certificated programs, and conferences of the highest quality. Its approach is based on a shared vision of concerned educators in agriculture and natural resource management who seek to Enhance Academic Productivity.
The A*DEC approach issues a clear challenge to existing providers of agricultural and natural resource management education. The challenge is to chose between change or atrophy - to take the risk that the future will lie in command of delivery mechanisms or that the current wave is just like previous waves of technology such as the overhead projector and the personal calculator. The vision of A*DEC has been taken further by a consortium of the Governors of Western Universities in the USA (SmartStates, 1996). The consortium aims to:
In particular, Governors are looking for more effective use of State investments and see higher education as a spur to the development of information technology networks. The experience of agricultural extension in assessing means and situations in which individuals learn and are motivated to continue learning, is of direct relevance and offers a unique advantage to agriculture courses adopting this approach.
While the potential for such a virtual university is great, there is a need for incentives to encourage use of such a service on the part of both teachers and learners. Students would be reticent to accept an alternative to traditional university education unless certification is accepted by employers and universities as being equivalent to other types of learning. Universities themselves may be reluctant to embrace such technology because of the significant changes it requires of both management and academics. Incentives need to be put in place to maintain quality of any service which develops outside traditional providers which do not enter the field; non-traditional providers will rely on the depth of understanding of a field of knowledge existing within traditional universities. If traditional providers do not accept the opportunity, it is better that development occur by using the entrepreneurial skills of private providers coupled with the depth of knowledge of traditional providers than to relegate new providers to a lower level of knowledge. The criteria to produce a virtual university have been defined by the Western Governors in the words which may indicate the nature of the Future University.
| Future University
Ö a virtual university will be: market-oriented focused on developing markets for certified graduates in a wide variety of instructional material; independent - not controlled by those who represent established interests with regard to either delivery of education or its certification; client-centered - focusing on needs of students and employees rather than instructional providers, e.g., flexible and responsive in instructional delivery rather than constrained by the fixed schedules and sequential structures typical of current education delivery; degree-granting - empowered to grant certificates recognized by employers and degrees recognized by both employers and the academic community, initially in a limited number of areas, ultimately from associate to the graduate level across a broad spectrum of fields; accredited - fully accredited by regional and appropriate specialized accrediting bodies for the degrees and certificates it bestows; competency-based - grounding the certification of learning on the demonstration of competency rather than the accumulation of credits or experiences, or judgments about the quality of providers; non-teaching - not providing instruction directly, but drawing upon needed capacity wherever it exists, both in colleges and universities, and in the private sector and among individual experts as well; high quality - setting competency expectations for certification that will help raise levels of quality for all learners and providers; cost-effective - sharing information technology infrastructure, seeking other economies of scale, forging partnerships, drawing on existing education resources and reducing time to degree by the fullest extent possible to reduce the per-student costs of delivering instruction. [It will also be] regional - offering opportunities for participation Ö in a manner that is flexible and adaptive, and interconnected in ways that follow regional economic and social interests; ... and quickly initiated - not requiring lengthy study and developmental work but actually functioning and delivering benefits Ö SmartStates (1996) |
The virtual university is more than a dream. Business plans have been developed and a number of potential barriers addressed. Its links to consortia such as A*DEC are also becoming clearer. In addressing the core business of education as being the creation of a learning environment, such concepts as the virtual university are possible and provide the opportunity for the lessons of extension and environmental concerns of the public to be accommodated.
Changes in delivery mechanisms and in the conceptualizing of agricultural education, may occur without any specific management or direction. However, as these trends indeed exist it may well behoove funders of such institutions to acknowledge their responsibility in assisting evolution towards future models. Institutionalized funding mechanisms work against such change by using decision making systems suited to past experience - maintenance of the status quo.
In LDCs, the significant influence of external funding agencies such as the World Bank can catalyze changes. Past projects have focused on large-scale investments in expensive physical facilities, foreign training of staff to learn about mechanisms for education in MDCs, and implicit assumptions of a lecture-based teaching environment. Investment in the delivery of the essential service of education including those technologies which support its delivery will be a more important form of international development assistance for the future. It will free LDC universities from a position of followers of MDC universities to allow one of partnership or provider-purchaser of education services.
The future of natural resource education, including consideration of new technologies and the need for public understanding of food production imperatives and environmental balances, is discussed in the concluding Chapter.
Plus ça change
Technology changes, old skills now masked
Life's only constancy is itself change
Increasing speed to accomplish our tasks
True values do not from the essence range
E-mail today so crisp, clear, to the point
Distilled of pleasantries, full of meaning
Yet genteel phrase, fine prose doth still anoint
Active like moss on barren rock greening
As 'phone reduced travel, for screen give thanks
Change for the worse, or for enhanced freedom?
Ask the young! they know of its narrow strengths
Out of babes' mouths once more cometh wisdom
True principles and values in these flows
Ignore change's details - plus c'est la même chose
