Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, has an interesting perspective on the future of education, as described in this recent cnet article. Responsible for over 400,000 students and 46,000 employees over 23 campuses, Reed envisions students becoming more like telecommuters. They might “meet with faculty and peers one day a week on campus, and then use simulations, virtual worlds and information downloaded for coursework the rest of the week.”
With Reed expressing concerns over expanding enrollment numbers and limited classroom space, it seems that the next logical place to look is in virtual space. Over 70 universities have already built island campuses in Linden Labs’ virtual environment, Second Life. It seems to me that virtual environments are a great way to learn some things — e.g. business (e.g. virtual real estate, intellectual property concerns), economics (virtual economies, competition, cooperation), art and architecture, social science issues like diversity and discrimination, and game design among a host of other topics — but there also seem to be some serious limitations and concerns that come along with an increased reliance on online class sessions. Will the open-ended anonymous nature of the world create more distractions (e.g. what if a student comes dressed as a chimpanzee in the virtual classroom)? If the teacher becomes more like a facilitator in a virtual world, is authority undermined too much? How much guidance/control does (and should) the teacher have? Then there are all the technical issues and high bandwidth requirements, not to mention equity issues — which schools can afford the technology?