The teacher as global brand?
A report published today on the impact of technology on daily life by 2010 predicts an elite group of teachers will be lecturing via video conferencing, streamed audio and podcasts to classes of thousands.
The students in the actual university lecture theatre - or even the school classroom - will be a tiny part of the audience, while learners across the globe will be able to download transcripts and recordings.
This isn't necessarily a good thing - the Rev Ian Paisley has been selling tapes of his sermons for decades and it's not doing much for learning and enlightenment. On the other hand there is Sir David Attenborough, a benign educator of millions, as a shining example.
These sort of predictions have been made before, notably at the height of the dotcom boom in 1999 when universities were eying up a global student body, accessing courses online and via video-conferencing. The star teaching performer would collaborate with researchers in his or her team to bring the latest discoveries to life. Those predictions were followed by a dotcom bust but, who knows, next time it could be different.
What the report, commissioned by Deloitte, the business advisory firm, is more certain of is the hi-tech cheating to come. Plagiarism is now endemic thanks to internet searches - although universities are fighting back with detection software in what looks destined to be become a permanent arms race. There is a market for paid-for coursework on the net.
The report points out that email and instant messaging allow leaked exam questions to be distributed rapidly and wireless technologies will produce more channels for student ingenuity and depravity.
These problems might lead to the return of the handwriten exam paper, speculates the report, although this would run counter to the enmormous effort and investment the school exam boards are putting into computer-based exams and marking.
Ah, marking - will 2010 see universities trying to get round the chance of industrial action by academic staff? That depends on how standardised exams become. If students are required to think - the most certain way of countering plagiarism - then human markers have to make judgements on their efforts.
"The teacher is still likely to be at the heart of the educational process in 2010," says the report. A no-brainer, that one.
