Driving seat or passenger seat? The information society and its impact on higher education Professor Derek Law Director of Information Resources, University of Strathclyde

The Background

Global issues  Poverty  Equity  Social inclusion  Government/private sector balance  Education for all  Information rich and information poor

Global Lessons  Technology is not patriotic  Investment capital is not patriotic  The race IS to the strong but also to the swift

Technology and The Inflation of the Internet  The World Wide Wait  As big as a decent library  Poor navigation  Inappropriate for scholarship  A giant experiment

Educational Change  Group work facilitated by technology  Nintendo learning  Martini learning – anytime, anyplace, anywhere  Second chance students  Lifelong learning and CPD

The transformation of publishing  SPARC  OAi  Courseware  Intellectual Property Rights in teaching materials  The personal and institutional website

Building an Internet Culture  Resist the Technology Sales Pitch  Do not put technology on existing dysfunctional institutions  Develop people not machinery  Build Internet civil society  is more important than the Web

Building an Internet Culture  Analyse the technical and cultural environment  Use technology to amplify existing sharing  Don’t distribute technology randomly  Education should be directed to social organisation not technology  Machinery does not fix social problems and institutions

Changes in the Information Business  Old wine in new bottles  Good information drives out bad  User friendly systems aren’t  Recognition that we are producers as well as consumers

Conclusions  Tools are just tools  Geography is not destiny  Bad management is not destiny  Avoid mainframe solutions to internet problems  Remember that content is king  BUT metadata is the king’s interpreter