Editorial - Standing by Ponds

Abstract

You can't step in the same water twice, said Heraclitus. He may have been correct in the literal sense, but even Heraclitus must have had those deja vu moments when his life seemed to be repeating itself. Standing by a pond while making a video download for this IRRODL editorial recalled identical experiences filming by ponds in 1975 and 1996, and prompted some thoughts on how little institutional policy ever really changes in the world of media-based education. In the mid-90s, television was on its way out as a medium of choice in North American and European education. It had been struggling for credibility for almost as long as it had been in use. The Open University in the UK, for example, started broadcasting course materials on TV in the early '70s, in the middle of the night and often for surprisingly small student enrolments of a few dozen. In 1978 the cost-effectiveness of this effort was questioned at a London University conference with the provocative title Is anybody there? It turned out they weren't, at least not in justifiable numbers, and that many courses could have been delivered to the students more efficiently in the mail on audio-tapes. Since the late '90s, the same question has been asked about the World-Wide Web, at least in regions where only tiny proportions of the population have Internet access. Turning a blind eye to the inaccessibility hurdle, developing-world institutions have pressed on developing web-based ODL materials anyway, with an eager If we build it, they will come attitude. They appear motivated to adopt the most modern techniques available, regardless, and are encouraged in this by western distance educators who apparently regard media older than the web as strange and obsolete. But Is anyone there, or likely to be so? Actually not for the foreseeable future. Web-based education has polarised world society into elite and have-not groups far more than TV and radio ever did; and its adoption in the developing world appears oblivious to the fact that today's students would derive greater benefit from media that are actually available to them. Are the hundreds of millions of would-be students who cannot access the Internet a kind of 'untouchable' class, whose problems and needs have become invisible?