The Global Virtual University

Citation

Bawden, D. (2005), "The Global Virtual University", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 61 No. 2, pp. 319-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410510585304

The twin themes of the book are that universities must become global and must simultaneously become largely, though not totally, virtual. The two themes are blended and balanced well, as the authors attempt to answer their opening question, what will universities be like in the knowledge society of the future. And, indeed, much of this book is about knowledge, and its communication, in one form or another.

The jacket describes this book as a “unique, visionary text”, and a contributed foreword tells us that it “offers a magnificent, virtual vision”: this is a lot to live up to. While they may not entirely succeed, Tiffin and Rajasingham do offer a very well‐written, nicely illustrated and exemplified, interesting, and at times provocative, view of the future of higher education, with a pleasing historical look back where appropriate.

The entire book rests on a contention that not everyone would agree with, or see as desirable: that “virtual universities are globalising, democratising and transforming knowledge”. In one of a number of illuminating historical asides, we learn that Cardinal Newman coined the term “virtual university”, using it to mean not an educational institution but rather the developing metropolitan areas of the Industrial Revolution. The dynamic exchange of ideas and viewpoints in places was sufficient, in Newman's eyes, for them to be considered as a sort of university. Whether the digital places and spaces of today's virtual university are a true equivalent is debatable.

The authors give a rather simple, perhaps even simplistic, rationale for their main thesis. The world is becoming more global, digital, and corporate, and therefore so must universities. “The information society”, they baldly state, “is based on information technology, and so too must be its universities. They have to have a virtual dimension”. Similar arguments are advanced for the inevitability of the global nature of universities, and for their private, corporate status, since a global university cannot be supported by any national government. All true, perhaps, but so central are these views to what follows that it would have been good to have had a little more discussion of their inevitability and, indeed, desirability.

The major part of the book deals with the influence of information technologies on teaching and learning at universities, and with the authors' visions of where current trends might lead. A good deal of varied material is presented, generally falling into the twin strands of the increased use of virtual reality combined with artificial intelligence and of greater knowledge resources available through the internet.

The former is more thoroughly developed, and convincingly argued, with a vision of remote participation through virtual reality equipment, and students largely taught through “Just In Time Artificially Intelligent Tutors”, a form of intelligent agent. There is some evidence to show that this is feasible, and the authors' enthusiasm shines through these sections. They certainly give a stimulating view of possibilities; however, it is not always easy to determine which of them are achievable in the near future, and which are merely a gleam in AI researchers' eyes.

The authors are by no means uncritical internet enthusiasts – “the Internet as we know it is fast becoming a graffiti‐ridden information slum” – but they still see the web as “having the potential to solve the library problems in the developing world as well as the developed world”; a sweeping statement, offered without much justification. I found these sections, on the nature of knowledge in universities of the future, to be the least convincing part of the book, the authors making little attempt to engage with some of the major issues. Their chapter on knowledge refers to the role of university libraries as knowledge sources, without making any attempt to show how they, or other information providers, may work together, or whether there is any real role for a library, in any form.

There is much else in this book, about the changing nature of students and professors, about methods of teaching and learning, about the curriculum, about the need for some continuing face‐to‐face interaction in a largely virtual institution, and so on. These are well presented and always interesting, even if they raise as many questions as they answer. I am intrigued by the idea that the relationship of academics to their universities will be similar to that of authors to their publishers, but am not sure how it would work. I see a strange mismatch in the authors' insistence that academics should have a “truthful, caring relationship” with their students, while elsewhere they urge the merits of students appearing as avatars, disguising their age, gender, etc., at a whim. And I have grave doubts about the authors' proposal that the basic unit of learning should be the equivalent of one week of study, with courses and programmes put together by the student by combing these small chunks, perhaps from a variety of different universities – I fail to see how this can deliver the “deep learning” which is said to be built into the design and ethos of the educational institution itself.

The nettle of the desire for some face‐to‐face interaction to create a “proper” student experience is grasped, by proposals for mixed physical/virtual classes, and for student centres catering for students in a particular physical locality, whichever virtual university they may be “attending”. Combined with a recognition of the reality of “situated learning”, whereby the context of learning affects the results, this seems to open the way for a reinvention of localised knowledge support, perhaps even in the form of something looking not unlike a conventional library. There may be nothing new under the sun, even if the sun be virtual.