For all its advantages, the E-university like anything, obviously has some inherent problems. First and foremost, because of the inflexibility of the majority of institutions, over such things as, standards regarding E-course decision-making and instruction, regulations guiding E-practice obviously descend from high up in the institutional hierarchy. This renders the powers of unit staff inferior to their counterparts in the conventional mode of education, who are considered to have more input to unit content (Agboola, 1993).
It should also be noted that the majority of present E-university courses exist in a dual mode environment with conventional on-campus education. This creates a situation where the ability of the electronic mode to fully realise its potential as a tool of distance teaching, is hampered (Ozuzu, 1994). Another big issue common to E-course design is the fact that the majority are based on the traditional question and answer model, where the information is delivered by the teacher and echoed back by students. For courses to be successful they must move towards the promotion of open investigation and personal knowledge generation.
Another serious problem inherent in the new E-learning environment is that of plagiarism. Students of E-universities have access to a seemingly infinite information base. With advancements in personal computing and information delivery, the ability to ‘cut and paste’ information from a variety of sources is becoming an increasing problem among university ranks (Singh & Doherty, 2004). While it may be argued that this issue was just as common in conventional tertiary environments, nowadays, with the source of the plagiarism not being restricted to the campus library catalogue, detecting plagiarism is a lot more complex. And it is a reality that as students become more technologically competent, chances are a that Google search is not going to be sufficient either.
Agboola, B. (1993) “Contact Sessions in Distance Education: An Asset as Well as a Burden�?, Indian Journal of Open Learning 2 (4) pp 17- 22.
Ozuzu, C. (1994) “Problems in the Management of Distance Education�?, ABSU Journal of Distance Education. 2 (1) pp 239-249.
Singh, P & Doherty, C. (2004) “Global Cultural Flows and Pedagogic Dilemmas: Teaching in the Global University Contact Zone�?, TESOL Quarterly, 38(1) pp 9-42.
Greg David Toolen 11:58, 28 Oct 2005 (EST)
