The Impact of Ict on Tertiary Education

The ascend-to doe with of ICT on ordinal instruction advances and promises Kurt Larsen and Stephan Vincent-Lancrin Organisation for Economic Co-operation and m tonic(prenominal)ing (OECD) Directorate for raising / Centre for nurtureal Research and Innovation* engage OECD/NSF/U. Michigan Conference Advancing Know windge and the Knowlight-emitting diodege Economy 10-11 January 2005 working dandy DC ABSTRACT The promises of e- tuition for transforming 3rd instruction and on that pointby advancing the cognition saving stand rested on three arguments E- discipline could expand and strain admission charge to ternary reading and reading make better the feature of grooming and reduce its equal.The paper evaluates these three promises with the sparse vivacious data and demonstration and concludes that the human beings has non been up to the promises so farthest in hurt of pedagogic pattern, while it has already in all likelihood signifi piece of tailtly im turn egress the boilers suit larn (and breeding) recognise. Reflecting on the moods that would help develop e- breeding further, it then identifies a hardly a(prenominal) challenges and highlights extend gentilityal resource initiatives as an stumperling of itinerary earlier.The outset section of the paper recalls al well-nigh of the promises of e- acquisition the min compargons these promises and the real achievements to bodyguard and suggests that e- cultivation could be at an early stage of its variation cycle the trey section highlights the challenges for a further and to a greater extent than homely innovative culture of e- acquire. Knowledge, intimacy subjectness and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) view as had strong repercussions on galore(postnominal) scotch benas, e. g. the informatics and colloquy, finance, and transportation sectors (Foray, 2004 Boyer, 2002).What close breeding? The noesis-based economy sets a risi ng scene for training and red-hot challenges and promises for the cultivation sector. Firstly, discipline is a prerequisite of the noesis-based economy the production and go for of sassy knowledge both(prenominal) require a much than than ( conductlong) educated population and workforce. Secondly, ICTs ar a truly powerful tool for diffusing knowledge and training, a primal brass of the didactics process in that sense, they muckle play a pedagogic situation that could in principle complement (or besides get by with) the tralatitious dresss of the article of belief method sector.These atomic number 18 the twain challenges for the schooling sector stick around to expand with the help (or to a misfortunateer place the pressure) of new forms of acquire. Thirdly, ICTs rough beats induce innovations in the slipway of doing things for example, navigation does non involve the uniform cognitive processes since the ball-shaped Positioning System (GPS) was invented (e. g. Hutchins, 1995) scientific research in m any(prenominal) field has as well as been revolutionised by the new possibilities tenderizeed by ICTs, from digitization of instruction to new recording, simulation and data touch on possibilities (Atkins and al. , 2003).Could ICTs similarly revolutionise cultivation, especially as education deals bringly with the codification and transmission of knowledge and information two activities which power has been decupled by the ICT revolution? The education sector has so far been characterised by quite a slow progress in shores of innovation growth which impact on program line activities. Educational research and training does non play a strong role as a factor of enabling the direct production of systematic knowledge which translates into variety of instructions that industrial plant in the classroom or conjure hall (OECD, 2003).As a g overnment issue of fact, education is not a field that lends itself eas ily to experimentation, spark glumly beca subroutine observational improvementes in education argon often im accomplish qualified to describe in precisely enough to be sure that they be actually existence replicated (Nelson, 2000). there is comminuted codified knowledge in the realm of education and scarcely weak developed mechanisms whereby communities of cogency incorporatedly crapper reserve and benefit from the discoveries made by their colleagues.Moreover, eruditeness typically enumerates on approximately early(a) education inputs than those received in the class or formal education process the success of larn depends on many social and family aspects that be actually beyond the control of educators. Information and communication technologies potentially offer amplifyd possibilities for codification of knowledge nigh breeding and for innovation in teach activities through and through being able to lay off ontogeny and cognitive activities anywhere at any time. encyclopaedism at a outperform screw furtherto a greater extent be more learner-centred, self-paced, and problem solving-based than personal teaching. It is in addition true, except, that many schooling activities cannot be coordinated by realistic heart fillet of sole(prenominal). The aspiration and spontaneity generated by strong-arm presence and social pigeonholingings often endure crucial. Likewise, personal ex turns argon important when they alter an separate(prenominal) forms of sensory cognition to be stimulated apart from these utilisation upd indoors the framework of electronic interaction.However, the influence of length and time is waning now that the technological faculty is on hand(predicate) for knowledge-sharing, aloof access and teamwork, and organising and coordinating tasks over panoptic argonas (OECD, 2004a). focal heighten on 3rd education, this paper examines the promises of ICTs in the education sector, origin as a wa y to better participate in the advancement of the knowledge economy, second as a way to introduce innovations. Leaving deflection the impact of ICTs on the research or e-science performed by third education institutions (see Atkins and al. 2003 David, 2004), we concentrate on e- education, broadly understood as the intake of ICTs to grow or support knowledge and teaching in ( ordinal) education. E- discipline is thence a generic term referring to different uses and intensities of uses of ICTs, from wholly online education to campus-based education through other forms of duration education supplemented with ICTs in well-nigh way. The supplementary sample would encompass activities ranging from the close to basic use of ICTs (e. g. use of PCs for word processing of assignments) through to more advanced espousal (e. g. pecialist disciplinary softw be, handheld devices, attainment way systems etc. ). However, we keep a presiding interest in more advanced applications includ ing some use of online facilities. Drawing on the scarce alive enjoin, including a recent take after on e- learn in post- junior-grade institutions carried out by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), it shows that e- accomplishment has not yet lived up to its promises, which were overstated in the hype of the new economy. ICT have n one(a)theless had a real impact on the education sector, inducing a becalm rather than perfect revolution.Finally, it shows some possible directions to further stimulate its maturement. The conflict of the paper is organized as sees the first section recalls some of the promises of e-learning the second comp atomic number 18s these promises and the real achievements to date and suggests that e-learning could be at an early stage of its bankers acceptance cycle the terce section highlights the challenges for a further learning of e-learning and shows what directions cleverness be the close undimmed for its further increment. I.Advancing knowledge and the (knowledge) economy the promises of e-learning The number of ICTs represents high promises for the 3rd education sector (and, more broadly, the post-secondary education sector if one takes into account their impact on non-formal education). ICTs could and then play a role on three fundamental aspects of education policy access, character reference and cost. ICTs could possibly advance knowledge by expanding and outturn access to education, by improving the quality of education and reducing its cost.All this would build more capacity for the advancement of knowledge economies. This section summarises the master(prenominal) arguments backing the promises. E-learning is a promising tool for expanding and bigning access to 3rd education. Because they relax lay and time constraints, ICTs can pull up stakes new heap to participate in tertiary education by increasing the flexibleness of society compared to the traditionalistic f ace to face poseur working scholarly persons and adults, people living in remote areas (e. . rural), non-mobile pupils and even up contrasted students could now more easily participate in education. convey to ICT, learners can indeed think over where and/or when they have time to do sorather than where and/or when classes are planned. While traditional correspondence-based distance learning has long played this role, ICT have enhanced traditional distance education enabled the rise of a continuum of practices between to the rich campus-based education and amply distance education.More specifically, richly online learning can allow in astronomic be of students to access education. The constraints of the face-to-face learning experience, that is, the size of the rooms and buildings and the students/teacher ratio, represents another(prenominal) form of relaxation of space constraints. ICTs indeed allow a very cheap cost of reproduction and communication of a lesson, via d ifferent performer identical the digital recording and its (ulterior or co-oc online) diffusion on TV, radio set or the Internet.The learning process or content can besides be codified, and at to the lowest degree some parts be assess in learning tendency lenss, for example a multimedia packet, that can in principle be employ by millions of learners, either in a synchronous or asynchronous way. Although both forms expertness induce some loss in terms of teachers-learners interactivity compared to face to face teaching, they can fill a scale of participation that would be unfeasible via face-to-face learning.When the requisite are huge, richly online learning can be crucial and possibly the altogether realistic means to increase and widen rapidly access to tertiary education. Some developing countries have huge cohorts of young people and too polished an academic workforce to meet their large unmet posit disposed training new teachers would take too much time, e ven so resources, e-learning might represent for many potential students and learners the totally chance to study (rather than an alternative to full face-to-face learning) (World Bank, 2003).E-learning can also be seen as a promising way for improving the quality of tertiary education and the effectiveness of learning. These promises can be derived from different characteristics of ICTs the increased flexibility of the learning experience it can give to students the enhanced access to information resources for more students the potential to drive innovative and effective ways of learning and/or teaching, including learning tools, easier use of multimedia or simulation tools finally, the possibility to dispense these innovations at very low borderline cost among the teachers and learners. quad E-learning has not only the virtue to be inclusive for students that cannot participate in tertiary education because of time, space or capacity constraints, as it was shown above. It can also in principle offer to students more individualise ways of learning than collective face-to-face learning, even in small groups.Although learning is often personalised to some extent in higher education through the modularity of paths, ICTs allow institutions to give students to choose a wider variety of learning paths than in non-ICT supplemented institutions not the to the lowest degree because of the administrative burden this would represent in large institutions. This means that students can experiment learning paths that best suit them. Moreover, e-learning can potentially allow students to take courses from several institutions, e. . some campus-based and others fully online. This possible flexibility of individual curricula can be seen as an feeler of the overall student experience, regardless of pedagogic changes. In one word, e-learning could render education more learner-centred compared to the traditional seat. A prestigious university chiefly has a sizeabl e depository library gathering tons of codified information and knowledge. 1 of the most visible impact of ICTs is to give easier and almost instant access to data and information in a digital form that allows manipulations that are sometimes not other than possible. The digitisation of information, from academic journals through to books and class notes, can change (and has changed) the life of students by giving them on the loose(p) access to educational resources, information and knowledge, as well as new data processing possibilities.But e-learning could also lead to the enhancement of quality in tertiary education by wind to innovative pedagogic methods, new ways of learning and interacting, by the easy sharing of these new practices among learners and teachers communities, as well as by more transparency and easier comparisons and cross-fertilisation of teaching squares and methods. Finally, e-learning can be seen as a promising way to reduce the cost of tertiary education, which is critical for expanding and widen its access worldwide. It might gum olibanum represent new opportunities for students having ifficulties with this traditional format. Although ICT investments are expensive, they can then generally be used at near-zero marginal cost. Where would this cost-efficiency stimulate from the replacement of expensive brick and mortar campuses by virtual(prenominal) campuses the digitisation of library materials that would save the cost of keeping huge paper collections the improvement of efficiency of institutional management the automation of some of the traditional on-campus activities, including some teaching. II. Living up to the promises a quiet rather than radical revolutionHas e-learning (and especially online learning) lived up to the promises outlined in the preceding section? It has to some extent. The reality of e-learning has never matched its most radical promises (Zemsky and Massy, 2004) while experiments are stock-still underwa y, the sign stage of over-enthusiasm has ended when new economy bubble burst some 2002. In this respect, e-learning has followed the ups and down of the new economy and given rise to the same caveats as in other sectors irrational beliefs more or less its market hold dear, over-investment, over-capacity, and more announces than services really launched (Boyer, 2002).Like other activities, e-learning has not proven yet its skill to generate high profits or to replace the old economy of learning. However, interpreting this as a failure of e-learning would however over-simplify the reality and could be seen as throwing the baby with the bath water. While, perhaps unsurprisingly, e-learning has not led to the radical revolution in tertiary education that was sometimes prophesised, some of its forms are already pervasive in tertiary education and have already led to a quiet revolution.Its modesty should not lead to over liveliness it. This section gives a overiew of the limited sev eralize we have about the adoption of e-learning in tertiary education. E-learning adoption The radical innovation placement was that fully online learning would progressively supersede traditional face-to-face learning and represent a competitive threat for traditional tertiary educational institutions. To some extent, this belief has been a reason for the creation of new ventures and for established institutions to enter this new market early adopters ould indeed possibly crystallise a brand name and a serious competitive expediency in the new market. The reality is that, while sometimes successfully experimented, fully online learning has remained a marginal form of e-learning and often not even the ultimate goal or rationale for e-learning adoption. However, this does not mean that e-learning in other forms has not kick upstairsed epoch-making ground over the past cristal in tertiary education thither is indeed some evidence of a noticeable growth of e-learning adoption b oth on need and supply sides.One must bear in mind that e-learning encompasses a wide retch of activities. Following the terminology used in the CERI survey (OECD, 2005), we discern between different directs of online learning adoption as follows, from the less to the most intensive form of e-learning ?None or trivial online presence ? tissue supplemented the Web is used only if not for samara active elements of the course (e. g. course outline and lecture notes online, use of email, links to external online resources) without any reduction in classroom time ?Web dependent Students are required to use the Internet for tonality active elements of the planmee. g. online discussions, assessment, online realize/ collaborative workbut without significant reduction in classroom time. ?Mixed mode Students are required to participate in online activities, e. g. online discussions, assessment, online visualise/collaborative work, as part of course work, which replace part of face- to-face teaching/learning. Significant campus attendance dust. Fully online the vast bulk of the programme is delivered online with typically no (or not significant) campus attendance or through learning objects. What do we know about the major(ip) trends in the adoption of e-learning by institutions and students? First, e-learning has grown steadily in the last decade, at a comparatively rapid pace, but from a very low starting pointand for some activities from scratch. The neglect of comprehensive data renders these trends uncontrollable to document, but existing surveys all point to the same direction of an increasing activity/supply.A significant administer of tertiary education institutions have developed some e-learning activities and strategies and guess in the critical importance of e-learning for their long term schema. The 2003 Sloan Survey of Online information based on a sample of 1 000 US institutions shows that only 19% of US institutions have no advanced e-lear ning activities that is tissue dependent, obscure mode or fully online courses (Allen and Seman, 2003). The remainding 81% offer at least one course based on those advanced e-learning activities.Second, this growth of e-learning under all its forms should continue in the near in store(predicate). There is indeed a converging evidence that tertiary education institutions consider as part of their future development strategy. In the Sloan survey, less than 20% of the US tertiary education institutions considered online education as not critical to their long term strategy. Similarly, data from the first international survey by the sentinel on Borderless high Education (OBHE) revealed that of the 42 UK institutions that responded (out of a total population of ca. 06), 62% had developed or were developing an online learning strategy and most had make so since 2000 (OBHE, 2002). The second survey undertaken in 2004, 79% of the 122 universities from the Commonwealth countries respo nding to the survey had an institution-wide online learning strategy as such or integrated into other strategies (46%) or under development (33%). wholly 9% of these institutions had no e-learning strategy in place or under development in 2004 .While these figures may reflect some self-selection in the respondents, they unambiguously show a significant adoption or unforcedness to adopt some form of e-learning in the advent future. Although reflecting different levels of adoption of e-learning, all post-secondary institutions participating in the CERI survey on e-learning point to the same direction and report plans to increase their level of online oral communication or to keep an eye on their already high levels (OECD, 2005). Third, virtual universities are not likely to compose the paradigm of tertiary education institutions.While it bequeath most likely continue to grow, especially in distance institutions (see below), no evidence point towards a predominance of this form of e-learning in the near future in tertiary education. While the mixed mode of learning shading online and on-campus courses now clearly appears as a better candidate, institutions head towards the simultaneous offer of a variety of learning models. For understandable reasons, only few campus-based institutions (that is the bulk of post-secondary institutions) seem to father at delivering a large share of their courses fully online or at becoming virtual.While some institutions participating in the CERI survey are at the avant-garde of e-learning, no campus-based institution predicted to deliver more than 10% of its total programmes fully online within three historic period (OECD, 2005). In the US, rather than offering only fully online courses (16%) or only mixed mode courses (10%), most institutions offer both fully online and mingle courses moreover, the majority (67%) of academic leaders believe that mixed mode and web dependent courses hold more promise than fully online, against only 14% having the opposite view (Allen and Seaman, 2003).This clearly reflects what we know about the main rationales for labor movement e-learning. The OBHE surveys show that on-campus enhancement of teaching and learning (1st) and improved flexibility of speech for on-campus students (2nd) are the two key rationales in institutional strategies of e-learning. Only 10% of the institutions considered the enhancement of distance learning as more important than on-campus enhancement.Interestingly, the level of importance granted to distance or fully online learning decrease between 2002 and 2004 among returning respondents. Distance or fully online learning remains the fifth most important rationale though (OBHE, 2002, p. 4). Finally, while a generalisation of the fully online model is not probable for tertiary education overall, at least in the medium run, this does not mean that fully online activities are not growing rapidly nor that the fully online learning model gain s ground at distance education institutions (Bates, 1995).To our knowledge, no data on fully online enrolments are functional for other countries than the United States. According to the 2003 Sloan survey, more than 1. 6 million students (i. e. 11% of all US tertiary-level students) took at least one fully online course during the Fall 2002 and about one third of them, that is 578 000 students, took all their courses online. For example, the University of phoenix, the largest university in the United States in terms of enrolments, has for example 60 000 of its 140 000 students online.The enrolments of fully online students in the United States were forecasted to increase by about 20% between 2002 and 2003, to 1. 9 million studentsa projection that proved to be accurate according to the 2004 Sloan survey (Allen and Seaman, 2003, 2004). This growth rate, which is projected estimated at 25% for 2005 is much higher than the growth rate of total tertiary enrolments in the United States . From a low starting point, fully online learning is growing at a rapid pace, even if it is merely as a complement to face-to-face or mixed mode learning.Moreover, fully online learning is clearly very important for distance institutions. In the CERI survey, the institutions entrusting to embrace fully online learning to the greatest extent were all virtual/distance learning only institutions (or branches) (OECD, 2005). In conclusion, e-learning seems to live up to its promises in terms of flexibility and possibly access. It is a growing activity that has for example significantly widened the participation in tertiary education of foreign students (OECD, 2004).Does e-learning improve the quality of tertiary education? The real impact of e-learning on the quality of education is difficult to measure. E-learning mostly embodies two promises improving education give thanks to improved learning and teaching facilities inventing and sharing new ways of learning thanks to ICTs, that i s a new specific pedagogic techniques. While the first promise is by and large becoming a reality, at least in OECD countries, the second appears further from reach.Viewed mainly as an enhancement of on-campus education, and thus matching the reality depicted in the previous section, there is some evidence that e-learning has improved the quality of the educational experience on both faculty and students sides (not to mention enhancement of administrative management). All institutions participating in the CERI survey reported a autocratic impact of greater use of e-learning in all its forms on teaching and learning. The quality of education (with or without e-learning) is very difficult to measure, not the least because learning depends on students motivation, abilities and other conditions (e. g. amily, social, economic, health backgrounds) as much as on the quality of teaching. However, the reasons explaining this positive impact on quality mostly lives up to the promises of e-l earning to offer more flexibility of access to learners, better facilities and resources to study, and new opportunities thanks to the relaxation of space and time constraints. Basically, they do not correspond to a significant change in class pedagogy, but to a change in the overall learning experience. According to the institutions, the main drivers or components of this positive impact come from facilitated access to international faculty/peers, e. . with the possibility of online lectures or joint classes with remote students flexible access to materials and other resources, allowing students to revise a particular aspect of a class, giving more access flexibility to part-time students, or giving remote and easy access to the library materials enhancement of face-to-face sessions, as the availability of archived lectures online frees up faculty time to focus on difficult points and application and because the introduction of e-learning has sometimes led to a surround on pedago gy improved communication between faculty and students and increase of peer learningThis positive impact on the overall learning experience is, alone, a significant achievement of e-learning, even though it has not radically transformed the learning and teaching processes. The quality of fully online learning is a more controversial question, possibly because online learning was once viewed as possibly become of higher quality than on-campus education (possibly including e-learning as already mentioned).Comparing the quality (or the beliefs about the quality) of fully online learning against traditional distance learning, traditional face-to-face learning or other mixed modes of e-learning might not yield the same go forths fully online learning is indeed more quickly comparable to distance learning than to on-campus education. While institutions having adopted e-learning have generally a positive view of its possible impact on quality, there is little convincing evidence about th e superior or subordinate quality of fully online learning compared to other modes of tertiary education. some other question is whether fully online learning has entailed innovation in pedagogy or just replicated with other means the face-to-face experience. As noted above, ICTs could indeed entail pedagogic innovations and help create a community of knowledge among faculty, students and learning object developers that would codify and capitalise over successful innovation in pedagogy. At this stage, there is no evidence that e-learning has yielded any radical pedagogic innovation.The most successful fully online courses generally replicate virtually the classroom experience via a mix of synchronous classes and asynchronous exchanges. Arguably, they have not delineate a dramatic pedagogical change. We go away see below that in spite of worthwhile experiments, learning objects and open educational resources are still in their infancy. They hold promises for educational innovation though. The cost of e-learning Has e-learning lived up its promises in terms of cost-efficiency?Here again, not if one looks at the most radical promises as noted above, virtual universities have not replaced brick and mortars and saved the cost of expensive building investments and maintenance digital libraries have supplemented rather than replaced sensible ones the codification and normalisation of teaching in a way that would allow less faculty or less qualified academics has not become the norm, nor have new online learning objects been invented to replace faculty altogether finally, it has become clear that there was no once-for-all ICT investments and that the maintenance and up rank be of ICT facilities were actually important, wayward to the marginal cost of then replicating and diffusing information. Moreover, cost-efficiency has for many universities been a secondary goal compared to the challenge of developing innovative and high quality e-learning courses at many te rtiary education institutions. Although the anking of cost-efficiency has increased between 2002 and 2004 by 16%, 37% of respondents considered cutting teaching cost long-term as a key rationale in the OBHE survey (OBHE, 2004)a small region compared to the two key rationales (over 90% of responses). Again, most universities consider e-learning materials and courses as a supplement to traditional class-room or lecture activities rather than a substitute. The predominance of web dependent and mixed modes of e-learning makes the assessment of the cost and benefits of e-learning investments more difficult to evaluate as they become part of the on-campus experience. It is striking that the institutions participating in the CERI survey on e-learning had no systematic data on their e-learning costs (OECD, 2005). In this context, and after the burst of the dot. om economy bubble that put out of commercial enterprise many e-learning operations (many never really started their operations th ough), chance oning sustainable cost-efficient models for e-learning investments in tertiary education has become critical. There are examples of cost-efficient models outside the traditional colleges and universities though. Virtual tertiary education institutions as e. g. the Catalonia Virtual University have a cost advantage as they are developing e-learning material from scratch and not building onto a physical camp. The establish University in the UK which is gradually moving from a traditional distance learning courses using books, video cassettes, and CD-ROMs to online courses has reported that their costs per student are one third of the average cost for similar on-campus programmes in the UK.Fixed capital costs are lower and it is easier to align pull up stakesing structures to e-learning processes than at traditional universities. The e-learning activities of capital of Arizona University, which is a private for-profit university mainly for adult students, is also see n as cost-effective. Its business model is based on standardised teaching, comparatively small on-line class size, and use of proven low-tech e-learning technologies (inducing lower costs than more sophisticated technologies). Much of the faculty staff at Phoenix University is often hired part time and having jobs at other tertiary education institutions, which often implies that staff development costs are lower at Phoenix University than other tertiary education institutions.E-learning investments in tertiary education can be cost-effective, but it depends on the business model, the compose and number of students and topics (cost-effectiveness has been demonstrated in some cases in large undergraduate science classes (Harley, 2003), and initial development costs. The calculations also depend on whether student opportunity costs are taken into account. The initial costs for e-learning development are often high (e. g. infrastructure, creating course material from scratch, experime ntation, new soma of staff/units, immature technologies, etc. ). In order to ensure that e-learning investments are cost efficient, e-learning activities may need to substitute parts of the on-campus teaching activities (rather than duplication).Educational innovations, like learning objects, could for example allow supporting the re-use and sharing of e-learning materials. Although data is unavoidablenessing on cost-efficiency, at this stage there is little evidence that e-learning has led to more cost efficiency in tertiary education. Failures have been more numerous than success stories, although the latter document the possible sustainability of e-learning. The adoption of ICTs for administrating tertiary education institutions has probably been the main source of cost efficiency in the tertiary sector, like in other economic sectors. Conclusion the e-learning adoption cycles So, has e-learning lived up to its promises?This is probably true as far as it holds promises for inc remental improvement, including an increased access and quality of the learning experiencea smorgasbord of change whose importance should not be underestimated. As for radical innovation, the tell is rather not yet. So far, e-learning has induced a quiet rather than a radical revolution of tertiary education. Perhaps e-learning will follow the same development path in tertiary education as other innovations that first begin with experiments, then expand to a group of early adopters before becoming commonplace. Zemsky and Massy (2004) have proposed a possible e-learning innovations S-curve divided into four distinctive but often imbrication adoption cycles that help understand the reliable development of e-learning, and, possibly, its future challenges. The cycles admit )Enhancements to traditional course/program configurations, which inject new materials into teaching and learning processes without changing the basic mode of instruction. Examples include e-mail, student access to information on the Internet, and the use of multimedia (e. g. PowerPoint) and simple simulations 2)Use of course management systems, which enable faculty and students to interact more efficiently (e. g. Blackboard or WebCT). They succeed better communication with and among students, quick access to course materials, and support for administrating and grading examinations 3)Imported course objects, which enable the faculty to embed a richer variety of materials into their courses than is possible with traditional do it yourself learning devices.Examples range from compressed video presentations to complicated interactive simulations including the increased use of learning objects 4)New course/program configurations, which result when faculty and their institutions reengineer teaching and learning activities to take full advantage of new ICTs. The new configurations focus on active learning and combine face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning in novel ways. They also require faculty and students to adopt new roles with each other and with the engine room and support staff. The overview of current e-learning adoption shows that most tertiary education institutions in OECD countries can generally be located in cycles one and/or two. These first two cycles have largely built upon and reinforced one another. However, they have not fundamentally changed the way teaching and learning is pursued at the large majority of institutions.Their momentum has not automatically transferred to either increasing use and dissemination of learning objects or to the use of new course/program configurations (e-learning cycles three and four). Cycles 3 and 4 correspond to changes remodelling more radically teaching and learning. While some experimentations underway give us some fancy of where they could head, they are still in their infancy. The third cycle corresponds to the creation of learning objects that can potentially offer an effi cient approach to the development of e-learning materials (i. e. decreased faculty time, lower cost, higher quality materials), although many issues remain (e. g. opyright, lack of incentives for faculty to create, the range of actors in and location of the creative process, lack of standardisation and interoperability of e-learning software). The learning objects model implies material/course development that departs from the craft-model where the individual professor is responsible for the majority of work. Instead it is a model where the course is assembled largely by or from third-party material. Besides the technical and organisational challenges of developing learning objects, there are also considerable pedagogical challenges using them. Some argue that learning is so contextually based that the breaking up of the learning experience into defined objects is destructive for the learning process.Evidence from the Open instruction enterprise at the Carnegie Mellon University suggests that effective e-learning courses are often facilitated by having a mind that runs throughout the course, which might be difficult to obtain with the notion of decontextualised learning objects (Smith and Thille, 2004). Therefore, much more research and development is needed to ensure pedagogical effectiveness of the learning objects model. For faculty members to rely on others for their material will also need a cultural change as it would probably often be considered today as demonstrating inferiority. Wide use of learning objects in tertiary education will therefore only occur if major changes in working habits and attitudes of faculty are possible. The development of learning objects is very much in its initial strain. This is illustrated by the use of the public available learning objects repositories as e. g.MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). The basic idea behind the MERLOT repository was to create a readily available, low- cost, web-based service to which experimenters could post their learning objects and from which interested practitioners could rate and download objects for use in their courses. While there has been a marvelous growth in the number of learning objects made available by MERLOT, there has been very little interest to use what other colleagues had made available and consequently little effort in terms of rating others learning objects. This can however be seen as the first steps towards the construction of knowledge communities in education.Despite the premature stage of learning objects and the large number of obstacles to overcome, some standard form of learning objects will probably emerge and gain importance in the development of e-learning in tertiary education as well as in other education sectors. Very few institutions have reached the stern e-learning adoption cycle at an institution wide scale. There are however institutions which are clearly experimenting with new ways of using ICTs that change the traditional organisation and pedagogy of tertiary education. One such example is the previously mentioned Open Learning chess opening at the Carnegie Mellon University. The use of cognitive and learning sciences to produce high quality e-learning courses into online learning practices is at the core of this initiative (Smith and Thille, 2004).As there is no generic e-learning pedagogy, the aim is to design as cognitive informed e-learning courses as possible. The establishment and execution procedures for routine evaluation of the courses and the use of formative assessment for corrections and reiterative improvements are part of the e-learning course development. The development of the e-learning courses often rely on teamwork including faculty from multiple disciplines, web designers, cognitive scientists, project managers, learning designers, and evaluators. The key question for any project like the Open Learning Initiative attempting a combination o f open access to free content, and a fee-for-service model for students using the courses in a degree granting setting is its sustainability.This initiative could not have been realised without significant voluntary contributions from private foundations and a major research grant from the National intuition Foundation to start the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. The next section will address the challenges for the adoption of these third and fourth adoption cycles. III. Challenges for the further development of e-learning in tertiary education what sustainable innovation model? The aim of this final section is to identify and reflect on some of the key issues that would need to be considered in a systematic way for e-learning to develop further and become a deeper driver of innovation in tertiary education.If the vast majority of colleges and universities are to embrace the third and fourth e-learning adoption cycles, a sustainable innovation and investment model will have to be developed. A first challenge lies indeed in the development of sustainable e-learning innovation models which go beyond using e-learning as an add-on to traditional forms of teaching and learning in tertiary education but rather invent new, utilizable and better pedagogic innovations partly substituting traditional face-to-face teaching. This will require a broad willingness of these institutions to search for new combinations of input of faculty, facilities and applied science and new ways of organising their teaching activities.A second challenge lies in the development of a realistic model for investment in e-learning that would stimulate the participation of faculty and other stakeholders and be financially sustainable, which is not straightforward given that there is little systematic knowledge on the real costs and benefits of e-learning investments in tertiary education. However, like for ICT investments in other sectors, the cost-effectiveness of e-learning investmen ts will depend on whether new organisational and knowledge management practices are adopted. It might indeed be more difficult to result the softer social, organisational and legal changes in tertiary education than the technological infrastructures prerequisite to fully embrace the advantages of e-learning.This section emphasises partnerships and networks as a possible way forward for further investment, product development and innovation diffusion in e-learning. There are many examples where tertiary education institutions seek to share the costs of e-learning development through partnerships and networking. league and network building are also useful for having access to new knowledge, to learn from others experience and exchange information about the latest developments in e-learning and they can involve many different organisations as e. g. traditional colleges and universities, virtual universities, libraries, for-profit ICT and training companies from different sectors etc .These activities can range from sharing material, joint applied science and software development, joint research and development, joint marketing, joint training, connectivity, etc. and can be sub-national, national and international (OECD, 2004b Cunningham and al. , 2000). After showing the importance (and challenges) for universities to winning their faculty in e-learning, we will turn to an innovative practice illustrative the potential power of partnerships and networks Open Educational Resources (OER). They will indeed most likely have significant implications for the way e-learning activities will develop over the coming years in tertiary education. Engaging universities and faculty in e-learningIn most OECD countries the question is no longer whether or not tertiary education institutions should invest in e-learning. Because of the competition between institutions and student crave for easy access to courseware material and flexible learning environments, most tertiary e ducation institutions willing to deliver quality teaching are bound to invest in e-learning. As we have seen, the large majority of institutions are now embracing e-learning adoption cycles one and two, which are basically about providing the students with better access to learning and course material and facilitating the electronic communication between students and teachers.Again, only very few institutions and faculty are however systematically exploring and producing re-usable learning material and objects (third cycle) or have taken full advantage of new ICTs with focus on active learning that combines face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning in novel ways (fourth cycle). The latter approach would require faculty and students to adopt new roles with each other and with the technology and support staff. While ICTs offer powerful new instruments for innovation, tertiary education institutions are generally decentralised institutions where ind ividual faculty often has the sole responsibility for teaching courses and delivering course material. Adoption of the third and especially the fourth e-learning cycle would imply changing to more collaborative ways of organising and producing teaching material.Faculty members would in many cases have to collaborate with a unharmed range of new staff as e. g. course managers, web designers, instructional/pedagogical designers, cognitive scientist etc. to produce course material. This could lead to resistance from traditional faculty arguing that current teaching practices have proved its value for centuries and there is no need to change them to new pedagogical and teaching methods, which have hardly proven their efficiency yet. Moreover, promotion of faculty and patronage allocations in universities are often linked to research activities rather than teaching activities, often seen as less prestigious.Faculty members have therefore often relation backly few incentives to invest their time in e-learning activities. The adoption of new ways of teaching and learning at tertiary education institutions through ICTs can therefore create organisational conflicts and tensions. New organisational innovations, new knowledge management practices, and more team working are therefore necessary conditions for tertiary education institutions to be able to move to e-learning adoption cycles three and four. The CERI study on e-learning case studies in post-secondary education has identified a number of lessons learnt by institutions that are in the forefront of e-learning development (OECD, 2005) More strategic e-learning homework at the institutional or faculty level and to tie this to the overall goals of the institution is needed A paradigm shift in the way academics think of university teaching would be necessary, e. g. a shift away from incredulity about the use of technologies in education and teacher-centred culture towards a role as a facilitator of learning proc esses, team worker, and learner-centred culture Targeted e-learning training relevant for the facultys teaching programme as well as ownership of the development process of new e-learning material by academics is also necessary. There is no one-best-way or trajectory for e-learning development at tertiary education institutions.But it might prove more difficult to provide the softer social, organisational and legal changes in tertiary education than provide the technological infrastructures necessary to fully embrace the advantages of e-learning (David, 2004). It will depend on a whole range of factors not necessarily related to the development of e-learning including Changes in the financing of tertiary education and in particular e-learning funding Student demography Regulatory and legal frameworks Competition between traditional tertiary education institution themselves and with new private providers Internationalisation including the possibility of servicing foreign students l iving abroad and not the least to the extent to which students will want to use the new opportunities for new and flexible ways of learning.Many tertiary education students would possibly prefer to have some kind of mixed model learning choice involving a whole range of different learning opportunities and forms combining face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning. A possible way forward Open Educational Resources Open Educational Resources appear as a potentially innovative practice that gives a good example of the current opportunities and challenges offered by ICTs in order to trigger radical pedagogic innovations. digitalisation and the potential for instant, low-cost global communication have opened tremendous new opportunities for the dissemination and use of learning material.This has spurred an increased number of freely accessible OER initiatives on the Internet including 1) open courseware 2) open software tools (e. g. learning manageme nt systems) 3) open material for capacity building of faculty staff 4) repositories of learning objects 5) and free educational e-learning courses. At the same time, there are now more realistic expectations of the commercial e-learning opportunities in tertiary education. The OER initiatives are a relatively new phenomenon in tertiary education largely made possible by the use of ICTs. The open sharing of ones educational resources implies that knowledge is made freely available on non-commercial terms sometimes in the framework of users and doers communities.In such communities the innovation impact is greater when it is shared the users are freely revealing their knowledge and, thus work cooperatively. These communities are often not able to extract economic revenues directly from the knowledge and information goods they are producing and the sharing of these good are not steered by market mechanisms. Instead they have specific pay back systems often designed to give some kin d of credit to inventors without exclusivity rights. In the case of open science, the reward system is collegial reputation, where there is a need to be identified and recognised as the one who detect which gives incentives for the faculty to publish new knowledge quickly and completely (Dasgupta and David, 1994).The main motivation or incentive for people to make OER material available freely is that the material might be adopted by others and maybe even is modified and improved. Reputation is therefore also a key motivation factor in OER communities. Being part of such a user community gives access to knowledge and information from others but it also implies that one has a moral obligation to share ones own information. Inventors of OER can benefit from increased free distribution or from distribution at very low marginal costs. A direct result of free revealing is to increase the diffusion of that innovation relative to conditions in which it is licensed or kept secret.If an inn ovation is widely used it would initiate and develop standards which could be advantageously used even by rivals. The Sakai project has, for example, an interest in making their open software tools available for many colleges and universities and have therefore set a relatively low entry amount for additional colleges and universities wishing to have access to the software tools that they are developing. The financial sustainability of OER initiatives is a key issue. Many initiatives are sponsored by private foundations, public funding or paid by the institutions themselves. In general, the social value of knowledge and information tools increases to the degree that they can be shared with and used by others.The individual faculty member or institution providing social value might not be able to sustain the costs of providing OER material freely on the Internet in the long term. It is therefore important to find revenues to sustain these activities. It might e. g. be possible to cha rge and to take copyrights on part of the knowledge and information activities springing out of the OER initiatives. Finding better ways of sharing and re-using e-learning material (see the previous mentioned discussion on learning objects) might also trigger off revenues. It is also important to find new ways for the users of OER to be rede of the quality of the learning material stored in open repositories.The wealth of learning material is enormous on the Internet and if there is little or no guidance of the quality of the learning material, users will be tempted to look for existing brands and known quality. There is no golden standard or method of identifying quality of learning material in tertiary education on the Internet as is the case with quality identification within tertiary education as a whole. The intentions behind the MERLOT learning object repository was to have the user community rating the quality and usability of the learning objects made freely available. In r eality very few users have taken the time and effort to evaluate other learning objects.There is little doubt that the generic lack of a review process or quality assessment system is a serious issue and is keep increased uptake and usage of OER. User commentary, branding, peer reviews or user communities evaluating the quality and usefulness of the OER might be possible ways forward. Another important challenge is to adapt global OER initiatives to local needs and to provide a dialogue between the doers and users of the OER. Lack of cultural and language sensitivities might be an important barrier to the receptiveness of the users. Training initiatives for users to be able to apply course material and/or software might be a way to reach potential users.Also important will be the choice (using widely agreed standards), maintenance, and user access to the technologies chosen for the OER. There is a huge task in better understanding the users of OER. Only very few and hardly conclusi ve surveys on the users of OER are available . There is a high need to better understand the demand and the users of OER. A key issue is who owns the e-learning material developed by faculty. Is it the faculty or the institution? In many countries including the United States, the longstanding practice in tertiary education has been to allow the faculty the ownership of their lecture notes and classroom presentations. This practice has not always automatically been applied to e-learning course material.Some universities have adopted policies that share revenues from e-learning material produced by faculty. Other universities have adopted policies that apply institutional ownership only when the use of university resources is firm (American Council of Education and EDUCAUSE, 2003). In any case, institutions and faculty groups must strive to maintain a policy that provides for the universitys use of materials and simultaneously fosters and supports faculty innovation. It will be inter esting to analyse how branded versus open e-learning initiatives will develop over the coming years in tertiary education. Their respective development will depend upon How the copyright practices and rules for e-learning material will develop at tertiary education institutions The extent to which innovative user communities will be built around OER initiatives The extent to which learning objects models will prove to be successful The extent to which new organisational forms in teaching and learning at tertiary education institutions will crystallise The demand for free versus fee-paid e-learning material The role of private companies in promoting e-learning investments etc. It is however likely that proprietary e-learning initiatives will not dominate or take over open e-learning initiatives or vice versa.The two approaches will more likely develop side by side sometimes in competition but also being able to mutually reinforce each other through new innovations and market opportu nities. Conclusion There are many critical issues surrounding e-learning in tertiary education that need to be addressed in order to fulfil objectives such as widening access to educational opportunities enhancing the quality of learning and reducing the cost of tertiary education. E-learning is, in all its forms, a relatively recent phenomenon in tertiary education that has largely not radically transformed teaching and learning practices nor significantly changed the access, costs, and quality of tertiary education. As we have shown, e-learning has grown at a rapid pace and has enhanced the overall learning and teaching experience.While it has not lived up to its most ambitious promises to stem radical innovations in the pedagogic and organisational models of the tertiary education, it has quietly enhanced and improved the traditional learning processes. Most institutions are thus currently in the early phase of e-learning adoption, characterised by important enhancements of the l earning process but no radical change in learning and teaching. Like other innovations, they might however live up to their more radical promises in the future and really lead to the inventions of new ways of teaching, learning and interacting within a knowledge community constituted of learners and teachers. In order to head towards these advances innovation cycles, a sustainable innovation and investment model will have to be developed.While a first challenge will be technical, this will also require a broad willingness of tertiary education institutions to search for new combinations of input of faculty, facilities and technology and new ways of organising their teaching activities. 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