Part of the problem is that we are using the wrong word, and it has faculty at all levels a little nervous. We are calling it a "virtual university." The wrong word here is "university."
The university I know and love is a place where ideas are tested and taught. It is the place where we pass on to future generations the culture of Western civilization. It is more than a place where information is stored and memorized and repeated.This "virtual university" will tap into the information quickly. It will make information available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world at any time. As a way of conveying information it could dramatically change the way we communicate.
But the bottom line is that the teaching/learning process means testing ideas not downloading information. Testing ideas requires an interaction that the virtual university will help support, but information alone is not an edu- cation.
Perhaps a look at the past will provide some perspective or at least an analogy. In one of Plato's dialogues (The Phaedrus) the character, Thamus, implies that once reading and writing have been introduced, educational institutions will not be needed.
The implication is that the purpose of the university then was drill and memorization, and it would no longer be necessary to memorize once people write thing down and later read them.
Unfortunately, Thamus also had a narrow view of the university.
Learning is not memorizing any more than education is information.
Perhaps Gary Parnell, the author of "Sharable Parables," will forgive an extended quotation of a parable based on this dialogue.
"Thamus, a king in ancient Egypt, once entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including numbers, geometry, astronomy and writing. Theuth displayed his inventions before the king and asked that he be permitted to promote their use among the people of the kingdom. As Socrates told the story:
"Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through them expressed approval or disapproval, according to how he judged Theuth's claims as well or ill-founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth's inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, Here is an accomplishment, my lord king, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom.'
"To this, Thamus replied, Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources.
"What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality. They will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society."
As it turned out, writing and reading became a tool of the university. It didn't destroy education as predicted in the parable. Yet, this parable has a parallel in history. These words jumped out at me from a text being used in a Snow College honors' course: "The invention of the printing press and movable type revolutionized Renaissance culture . . . in the same way that films, radio, and television changed the 20th century. . .
The early availability of book learning' undermined the dominance of universities, which had acted as the traditional guardians and spreaders of knowledge."
One can wonder if the information of the "virtual university" will undermine the education of the real university. Perhaps not if the information of the "virtual university" becomes another tool of the university rather than an institution apart from the university.
It may be that access to the Internet and seemingly unlimited information will be put in the same perspective as the telephone, as an important tool, but only a tool. It is said that Alexander Graham Bell thought the telephone would greatly diminish the need for college campuses since a student could call up a professor and consult from home at the convenience of both. Edison thought film would capture the best of the best lectures and eliminate the need to travel great distances for learning. Many of us remember the forecast that television was supposed to replace personal contact between teacher and student in education, and now we see the Internet being proposed for that same job.
The problem with all the prophecies of doom and boom that have accompanied invention is the narrow view they have of education. If education is only memorization, book learning, canned lectures or the transfer of information, the "virtual university" will do it all. But education is the examined life and a complex mix of personal relationships, social interactions, and the subsequent testing of ideas. This is something that can't be replaced by books, telephones, televisions, or computers.