Peter Cochrane, head of research at British Telecom's laboratories at Martlesham, envisages an electronic university with which people of all ages would communicate via remote links in a continuous learning process. The technology is already here, he says. He recently ran a demonstration of a computerised version of Gray's Anatomy for 21st century students, which combined video, text and speech so as to provide students with an interactive guide to the bones, tissue and nerves of the human body. Such technology would not only help teachers and students to cope with information overload, but would also enhance learning.
'Why bother with Gray's Anatomy' he asks, 'when you can fly through the body, take a scalpel to it and learn rather than just read? I would far rather go inside an atom using virtual reality and feel the forces between its components and see the distances than watch a physics lecturer chalk up 10 to the minus 39 on the blackboard.'
He challenges Britain's higher education establishment to describe the key features of a turn-of-the century university. Would it have students, libraries, buildings and laboratories, he asks, suggesting that in his view it would not.
He refers to a research project at Martlesham, known as 'experimenting with children', which he says has shown that today's young people learn in a totally different way to their parents, using different skills and with different expectations. 'They cannot conceive of a world without video games, colour television and pocket calculators. They want good graphics, very good animation and instant gratification.'
He also said that students were turning down places at Oxford and Cambridge in favour of offers from redbrick universities because they tended to have better computing equipment.
Previous / Next / Table of Contents