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This TAD Consortium Information Service has been

sponsored by Juta Publishers - web: www.juta.co.za - phone:

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Dear TAD friends,

Here is the latest information update from the TSA Centre

for Lifelong Learning.

I forgot to include a request for people attending the

TAD meeting at CSIR on 12 August to indicate their

intention to attend. Please could you indicate whether or

not you will be attending, so that I can make the necessary

catering arrangements.

Regards

Neil Butcher

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Report on Selected Technologies

July 1998

Education

The United States Government is discussing the provision of

subsidised education rates (e-rates) for educational institutions.

The concept of having every school in the country connected to the

Internet is a hot topic as it is in many other countries. Many

people have as an aim that textbooks should be replaced by PCs and

the traditional classroom by a 24-hour a day Internet connection.

Even President Clinton has now come out in supports the idea of a

subsidised Internet access in schools and libraries through fees

charged to long distance telephone companies. Without subsidies,

many poorer schools and libraries in rural areas will remain outside

of the information age, perpetuating an unacceptable level of

inequality.

Out-of-print books will soon be available again through Lightening

Print, a division of Ingram Books which intends to typeset books

using IBM printing equipment and software and then making them

available on a print to-order basis. The expected price range of US

$15 to $20 for a 300-page soft cover book could make this a popular

service for older materials.

At present copyright restrictions and commercial publications may

contribute to a reduction in the amount of research materials

available to universities. The "Big 12 plus Library Consortium" has

warned that some libraries are being forced to cancel journal

subscriptions due to high prices. At the same time legislatures are

working to restrict fair use of copyright at work which could limit

materials being made available to scholarly researchers.

While these reports appear from time to time, many sites on the

Internet are now available where academics are able to publish work

and share their work with no copyright restrictions, should they so

wish. People who are serious about their research and who would

like to share their findings with other people can do so very easily

via the Internet. This may bypass copyright restrictions. If

however, they feel the need to be protected by law, the appropriate

commercial channel should be used.

There seems to be no shortage of conferences on the subject of

online learning or web-based learning and institutions announcing

that they are introducing such activities, but the criticisms

continue on the quality of learning materials available on the web.

The description of typical web-based courses resembling "poorly

designed books" seriously needs to be considered when developing new

hypertext materials for education. The web can be used for a great

deal of inter-activity if appropriate software is used in the

development of materials. It remains curious as to why a distance

education institution that produces good quality print material

would produce a poorer standard of computer-based material.

At least the same level of typesetting skills needs to be

implemented to achieve the screen equivalent of a quality print

version of the course. Furthermore a high degree of interactivity

should be built in, in such a way that is appropriate to the

learner's level of Internet connection. As we know, the quality of

Internet connection varies greatly between cities and rural areas as

well as between developed countries and developing countries. One

cannot expect students to have high-speed constantly on-line access

to the Internet. Depending on where the target-market of students

is located, materials need to be communicated to the learners

computer so that they can interact with it off-line from the host

server on the Internet. This is the reality in most developing

countries.

One of the difficulties that has faced distance education over the

years is the length of development cycles in creating and updating

learning materials. Futurist, Edith Weiner, recently commented that

"_ in the 21st century, learning will become obsolete so fast, you

will have to be re-educated again and again to stay in the market _"

More and more learning is moving to the concept of continuous

education or lifelong learning so that one can keep up with the

constant need for new knowledge.

Educational institutions moving into the world of on-line courses

seem to approach it from different angles. Those from the classroom

environment seem to be have a greater problem than those from a

distance education environment.

In the traditional university setting, lecturers and professors are

used to "owning" their courses, while in the distance education

setting the institution frequently holds the copyright which is

frequently signed over by the staff member when they take up

employment. Where an institution is unable to legitimately claim

copyright, the viability of offering a course on-line is placed in

jeopardy. Likewise lecturers who feel they do not wish to

communicate their study materials over the Internet can also

jeopardise any strategic planning the institution has undertaken.

Issues of this nature need to be clearly set out in the organisation

and any employment contracts with new staff, if the institution

intends to move into the on-line environment, as seems almost

inevitable. Lectures on the other hand feel that they are at the

mercy of university administrators who have the power to move their

documents around in the institutions or even to shut their website

down as they wish. One wonders though, why a lecturer who

experiences this would keep what they consider to be personal

property on an institutional or company website, when web-hosting

has become such a low cost and easily used service.

In more a traditional public sector university, which some have

described as a cottage industry, the institution is being forced to

change rapidly because of the introduction of corporate

universities. Leading the way in this move initially were

company-sponsored universities in the United States, which are

almost moving very rapidly in other parts of the world. In South

Africa, two major educational groups have been formed, each buying

up private colleges. They are in the process of establishing the

first private universities under the new laws. One of these

universities boasts an enrolment of approximately 450 000 students

in North America and Africa.

Investing in corporate universities is one way that large companies

are able to get what they want without being restricted to paying

for education which university senates may decide is best for their

employess. While the commercially viable courses are strongly

supported by commercial universities, the traditional public sector

universities may be left primarily with those courses that do not

earn as much money and are not as popular. The roles of each type

of university need to be carefully worked out and collaborative

agreements entered into, where necessary, to ensure the survival of

those less profitable courses that society still needs.

Year 2000 (Y2K)

The Year 2000 problem that is on everyone's lips in the IT

Department seems to raise more concerns everyday. In response to

the between 120 000 000 and 150 000 000 people who still use DOS on

their desktop PCs, IBM has launched the new PC DOS 2000 which is

said to correct the two digit date problem automatically. To make

things worse, apparently this figure does not include the users of

Microsoft Windows 3.1 which operates on top of DOS on PCs. Stories

abound that if a PC is more than about a year old, you need to

replace it. This is serious enough to warrant consulting your IT

support company to ensure that your programs and computer still

works on 1 January 2000. It's best to take action, now if you have

not already done so.

Feedback

If you have a comment, request or suggestion on this report, please

e-mail it to Paul West at: pgwest@pwg.org

Regards

Paul West

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Telematics for African Development Consortium

P.O. Box 31822

Braamfontein

2017

Johannesburg

South Africa

Tel: +27 +11 403-2813

Fax: +27 +11 403-2814

neilshel@icon.co.za