Abstract
Most people would agree that the role of teachers in higher education will be changed by the advent of modern information and communication technology (ICT). At the very least open and distant learning (ODL) will become an established feature of educational provision rather than a specialist aspect. This is already evident in the increasing use of ODL in combination with conventional forms of course delivery by universities. More radically it is claimed that there will be a fundamental change in the nature of educational institutions, leading to the notion of virtual university, e.g. the Western Governors University (http://www.wgu.ed). These claims have in common the notion of utilizing the distributed nature of ICT to provide partnerships between teachers and learners that are not defined by either spatial or temporal constraints.DOI: 10.1080/0968776990070306
Highlights
Most people would agree that the role of teachers in higher education will be changed by the advent of modern information and communication technology (ICT)
More radically it is claimed that there will be a fundamental change in the nature of educational institutions, leading to the notion of virtual university, e.g. the Western Governors University
Just as future learners may be seen as clients contracting to receive educational provision from a range of providers, educators may be seen as independent workers offering their services to learners on demand
Summary
Thispaper exploresthe ideaof information and communications technology providing a medium enabling higher education teachers to act as freelance agents. The notion of a 'Peripatetic Electronic Teacher' (PET) is introduced to encapsulate this idea. PETs would exist as multiple telepresences (pedagogical, professional, managerial and commercial) in PET-worlds; global networked environments which support advanced multimedia features. The centraldefining rationale of a pedagogical presenceis described in detail and some implicationsfor the adoption of the PET-worldparadigm are discussed. The ideas described in this paper were developedby the author during a recently completed Short-Term British Telecom Research Fellowship, based at the BT Adastral Park
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