Virtual universities are not about to replace face‐to‐face teaching

Abstract

On the basis of evidence and experience [1], it now seems that conventional teaching is not about to be supplanted by the arrival of virtual universities. I like to teach face-to-face, and I value the body language of a class reacting to the subject matter, the pace, and the humor. Even though I have produced a large amount of multimedia teaching resources over 25 years, I have not tried to use these materials in any other than a support role. It now seems that the overwhelming majority of students want face-to-face contact in their studies and are not prepared to take virtual studies as a replacement. Students still want lectures, tutorials, and text books. Simon Marginson is the Director of the Centre for Research in International Education at Monash University, Australia, and I know him as a methodical and thorough researcher in education. His article on the many attempts to mount on-line distance higher education programs [1] shows that in general global ventures have faltered or collapsed. High-profile ventures have included Universitas 21 Global, Cardean University, Fathom, NYUOnline, and the UKe-University. An exception cited is the University of Phoenix Online that is viable in targeted markets. The Universitas 21 is a failed initiative that I have been involved with and watched as high expectation and funding turned to nothing over an 8-year period. A primary target of virtual universities has been Asian nations, especially China, given the potential demand. Marginson places the failure of English language global e-learning in the light of industry marketing strategies, the economics of on-line education, and the difficulties of cross-cultural targeting. Exporter universities have been insensitive to cultural and linguistic variations, let alone failing to establish local markets for a virtual product. Marginson calls for “greater skepticism about commercially driven scenarios and claims of company prospectuses, and about the viability of market-controlled paths of development.” Marginson's writing style has ever been stolidly academic, and although his subjects are important he can bury key conclusions in inaccessible prose. I was impressed by a newspaper reporter, David Read, who rose to the challenge of invigorating the message and crafted a lively article for the Melbourne Age newspaper [2]. This is a metaphor for good teaching approaches too, given that the subject remains faithfully treated. Does the journalist advance style over substance in the following excerpts? At least the message is clear in the following extracts from Read's article. Global virtual universities have been a catastrophic failure despite early predictions that web-based learning was a “tsunami that was sweeping (the) ivy-clad university of the past away.” Global e-learning ventures have not attracted a critical mass of students because they failed to understand that online degrees do not command the same status from students, academics and the community as traditional qualifications. There are serious implications for the beleaguered Universitas 21 Global—a consortium of 16 universities including Melbourne University and United States publisher Thomson Learning—which has fallen dramatically short of student and financial forecasts. Higher education is not an entirely standardisable product, a Starbucks or McDonald's that can be rolled out everywhere just like that. It is 40 to 50% more expensive per student to run a successful online teaching program than a face-to-face one.