Technologies to Support Learning

Changing Learners, Changing Technologies

Introduction and Summary

Learning for the twenty-first century (the Fyer report) argued the case for an inclusive view of lifelong learning to be high on the political agenda, and for the importance of the role of technologies both old and new, in its delivery. The Learning Age confirms these priorities. The information superhighway will be the route to the wealth of information in the future, and this will require people to have access to it and to have the skills to be able to use it. Not only school children but adults as well will need to understand these technologies, to have access to them and the opportunity to keep up their skills as technologies change. Such understanding, ability and access will increasingly be a necessary prerequisite of active participation in civil and democratic society, especially for adults.

Changing learners, changing technologies- is a discussion paper prepared for NAGCELL to assist its work on the wider use of technologies for lifelong learning. The sub-group’s membership is listed in Appendix 4. The group had to take account of but not duplicate the contemporary debate., the Kennedy and Dearing reports, the planning of the Ufi, the development of the National Grid for Learning and other government education and training programmes. Neither could it survey in detail all aspects of communications technology. However, global telecommunications and the imminent arrival of digital convergence of television, computing and telecommunications and the imminent arrival of digital television, both satellite and terrestrial, as well as video on demand. Digital technology enables the compression of broadcast signals and will allow for many more channels to be broadcast direct to the home as well as to learning centres and workplaces, offering some interactivity, provided people have equipped themselves with digital sets or decoders.

The information superhighway has become the symbolic description of the changes caused by its convergence. Evocative phrases such as ‘the divide between the information-rich and the information-poor’ have vital significance not just for life-long learning, but for active citizenship in an inclusive society. The implications touch all levels: individual, families, local communities, regions, national networks. They cut across all sectors; public, private, voluntary and community groups. The report considers these changes and identifies many recommendations which should be acted on now, and also suggests directions and implications for the longer term.

While communications technology in all its forms is developing fast, it has not yet reached most homes, learning centres or even colleges at affordable prices. Issues of access cannot only be left to the private market; there are wide variations in ownership and access between region, age and occupation groups. The challenge is two-fold: first, to ensure that best use is made in the shorter term of the existing technologies, particularly those such as TV and video which most people already have in their own homes and which they can use free at the point of use and second, at the sane time to plan systematically for the medium to longer term, when the new and more demanding technologies will be more widely available. Several government departments have an interest in encouraging access to ICT and increasing the public’s competence in its use, but there is little linkage between them or overall co-ordination between their work e.g DTI, DfEE and DCMS are all working on access to IT-equipped learning centres near them, as the UfI proposes, but they must be open to a wide constituency of adult learners.

The report pursues the issues involved in changing awareness and attitudes, the changing needs of learners and considers changes in provision to meet them, looking at the need for staff in institutions to change, for institutions themselves to change, the need for new learning strategies to take advantage of technologies, for learning opportunities in the workplace, for appropriate and affordable software, of agreed quality. Its focus is on increasing participation, offering access to ICT and its skills and on reaching those who otherwise will be information poor, particular those who are less likely to have ICT access through the workplace or through educational institutions. It argues for the renewed importance of broadcasting as its abilities are enhanced by digital interactive options for appropriate purpose and target groups. In particular it argues for a Technology Entitlement for adults. Not just for Lifelong Learning, but also for active participation in civil and democratic society.

Naomi Sargant, for the task group

 1 Changing thinking

This report is designed to complement the arguments made in Learning for the twenty-first century for an inclusive view of lifelong learning to be high on the political agenda and to spell out the importance of the role of technologies, both old and new, in its delivery. The information superhighway has become the symbolic description of the changes being caused by the convergence of television, computing and telecommunications. Evocative phrases such as `the divide between the information-rich and the information-poor' have vital significance not just for life-long learning, but for active citizenship in an inclusive society. The implications touch all levels : individuals, families, local communities, regions, national networks. They cut across all sectors: public, private, voluntary and community groups. We believe that there are a number of practical shorter term steps which should be taken now, and we also wish to suggest directions and implications for the longer term.

The information superhighway will be the route to the wealth of information in the future, and this will require people to have access to it, and to have the skills to be able to use it. Adults, as well as children, will need to understand these technologies, to have access to them and the opportunity to keep up their skills as technologies change. Such understanding, ability and access will increasingly be a necessary prerequisite of active participation in civil and democratic society.

The Technologies for Learning task group is asked to provide specialist advice to the National Advisory Group ‘on matters relating to the implications for the work of the group on the use of technology for learning’. While its task is obviously not to survey the whole field of lifelong learning and continuing education, it does have to position its work in the context of the contemporary debate, taking into account not just The Learning Age itself, but the Kennedy and Dearing reports and the Government’s responses to them, the planning of the UfI, the development of the National Grid for Learning and the other government programmes involved in delivering training and education. The provision of further and higher education is increasingly driven by the needs and choices of individuals and the curriculum is being delivered in smaller courses or modules, with transferability and accumulation of credit over time and across institutions. Technology has an increasing role to play both in the administration, delivery and effectiveness of learning. This report is not, therefore, about or directed to specific sectors of provision, but about adult learners, their needs and changing ways in which these needs may be met.

Neither can this report survey in detail all aspects of communications technology. However, global telecommunications are at a time of change with the convergence of television, computing and telecommunications. The term multi-media, now being used to encompass many of these new developments, including CD-rom and audiographics, links together the power of television with the power of the computer to which is increasingly added new telecommunications facilities, hence the increasing use of the new summary term, telematics.

Added to this is the imminent arrival of digital television, both satellite and terrestrial, as well as video on demand. Digital technology enables the compression of broadcast signals and will allow for many more channels to be broadcast direct to the home as well as to learning centres and workplaces, provided people have equipped themselves with digital sets or decoders.

2 Changing access to technologies

While communications technology in all its forms is developing fast, it has not yet reached most homes, learning centres or even colleges at affordable prices. The challenge for the next time period is two-fold: first, to ensure that best use is made in the shorter term of the existing technologies, particularly those such as TV and videos, which most people already have in their own homes and which they can use free at the point of use; and second, at the same time to plan systematically for the medium to longer term, when the new and more demanding technologies will be more widely available.

Issues of access to the information superhighway cannot only be left to the private market. While the proportion of people owning personal computers and other technological equipment is increasing, there are large differences in ownership between employment categories, between large and small families, between regions of the country, and by age and gender. Even the telephone is not ubiquitous : while 95% of people overall have a telephone, this drops to 86% among the unskilled manual workers and pensioners. While 29% overall now have a personal computer, and this rises to 48% among professional classes and 43% among small families, it drops to 17% among unskilled workers and 10% among couples of 65 & over. The regions with the highest ownership are the South-West (36%) and South-East (35%), while the lowest are the nations of Scotland and Wales, both at 25%. Ownership is, of course only one part of the story. It has to be related to connectivity to the Internet. While the South-West has the highest proportion owning a pc (36%), it has the lowest proportion, along with Wales, connected to the Internet (89%). By reverse, the North has low pc ownership (26%), but a high proportion connected (17%). See Appendix 1 for further details on ownership of communication links.

These figures show that while many people will have the resources to provide such technologies for themselves, many others will need to obtain access both to the necessary skills and to the telecommunications themselves through user-friendly public spaces. (See section 6). A network of such user-friendly centres for adult learning is not a new idea, but the understanding of its urgency is new. It is not an accident that several areas of government are considering versions of such centres. The UfI project assumes the necessity of a national network of kite-marked learning centres in a wide variety of locations from libraries to work-places, schools to supermarkets. The DTI's programme `IT for All' aims to offer people the opportunity to find out through accessible hands-on experience how new technologies can benefit them in their everyday lives. It already has more than 200 partners providing more than 700 activities at over 500 locations. Their stated aim is to create 2000 new access opportunities by March 1998, building up to 4000 sites by the end of 1998. Also under the wing of the DTI is the network of 89 Business Links with 240 outlets, providing information, counselling and business skills training for small businesses (SMEs). Of course, people’s needs for and interest in information technology differ and their needs may change over time. While the DTI’s attitudinal research still shows sizeable groups of people who are ‘unconvinced’ or ‘alienated’ by information technology, it records, overall, ‘some positive changes in attitude since 1996, particularly amongst women, older age-groups and the C2, D and E economic groups’. (DTI,1998)

For the community at large, the library network is an obvious source of information and an entry-point for lifelong learning. Many libraries are already equipping themselves for these new roles and, along with school-teachers, librarians are to be funded for IT training through new Lottery arrangements. New Library: the people's network makes a powerful case for the changing role of libraries in the information society, ‘complementing formal education provision by providing a resource base and a platform for people of all ages to participate in lifelong learning’. ‘There are 4,759 libraries in the UK, of which 693 are mobile libraries, plus 19,136 service points in hospitals, prisons, old people's homes etc’. The report proposes among new networked public library services, education and lifelong learning, business and the economy, training and employment, information for citizenship as well as the National Digital Library. The BBC expects to repeat and extend its very successful campaign `Computers Don't Bite' this year and has found libraries an especially effective partner.

Alongside these developments lies the Government's plan to connect every school and every library free to the National Grid for Learning. While the proposals for the establishment of the grid are obviously to be welcomed, there is clear concern in the consultation evidence that the recommendation that the project should start only with structures and content designed for schools and their teachers will be too limiting. It is almost inevitable that a model which is primarily designed for schools will not be the most appropriate one to also serve the greater variety of lifelong learning needs, and may, if the two models are not developed in parallel, prejudice the flexible development of later stages of the scheme for lifelong learning.

It is evident that there is a large amount of activity already in train nationally, and that this is taking place under the aegis of a number of different government departments. Clearly co-ordination between the major players interested in these networks of centres is an early priority. The information society is too important and entails too great a cost to the country for its development to be thought of in a piece-meal way. There needs to be an overarching plan, but this needs to be developed swiftly before individual pieces are put into place which inhibit the best grand design.

In parallel to these plans, a National Working party on Social Inclusion in the Information Society (INSINC) set up by IBM in collaboration with the Community Development Foundation has been looking at these issues from the perspective of communities and community organisations, ‘a spectrum which extends from very informal networks and activities based around households, to more formalised community groups and community-based organisations’. Their report The Net Result is a searching document whose implications go far beyond community needs. Its relevance is the wish to move from discussion of `information have-nots' to `recognition that some groups of people might become disadvantaged by being denied access to the communications opportunities which the technology is beginning to provide'. They argue for a network of Community Resource Centres, providing opportunities for raising awareness, and access to multi-media and on-line technologies at local level. They suggest that it should use `appropriate bases such as schools, libraries and community centres, and that the centres should be publicly funded and based on sustainable business plans’.

At local level, the evidence is of great interest in and demand for such opportunities, but that many projects have had to work on short-term funding, with no security or confidence that the work can continue unless there is a local champion to underwrite development. The cost of the technology combined with the necessity to serve local populations dictates collaboration rather than competition. (see section 14). It is vital to share good practice in running such centres and the new DfEE-funded report on IT awareness provides valuable advice in this regard. Section 6 suggests guidelines and criteria for running such centres.

The scale of the task of offering access to technologies for lifelong learning to the population at large is enormous. It will not be achieved through any one type of provider or level of provision, or even through the aegis of one government department. It will require the use of public and private spaces, particularly at the work-place, and putting together of public/private alliances. A UfI network of learning centres, for example, will be extremely necessary and desirable but not `sufficient' for the larger lifelong learning task. If the UfI is asked to be a lead player in setting up local learning centres, those centres will have to offer a wider gateway to lifelong learning as well.

Technological equipment is too expensive and necessary skills too valuable for resources not to be shared and opened up to as many learners as possible. Schools, colleges, universities and adult centres all have a role to play and a duty to play it as flexibly and imaginatively as possible. What is necessary is to replace competition between different providers with co-ordination and collaboration in offering accessible provision for learners. This requires assessment of local education and training needs and audits of telematics resources in order to develop local plans.

3 Ways in which changing technology can add value to learning

Technology provides both opportunities and dangers. It is not a universal panacea, and whether or not it is cost-effective depends on how it is used and for whom. The UK Open University has established itself as a world leader in its use of open and distance learning, reaching many people who would otherwise not have had access to learning and developing many innovative ways of offering learning. This is not the place to rehearse the case for the use of technology to assist the delivery of distance learning; after all its oldest form, correspondence education, uses print, still the cheapest and most accessible medium. Since the newer technologies themselves are expensive, their use tends to be justified in open and distance learning if they are aiming to reach large numbers of people effectively, or to reach people who cannot be reached in other ways.

The use of technology to enhance or broaden the general learning experiences for most adults and to assist teachers to deliver more effective learning is less advanced, and has until now been looked at in too narrow a way. Some wider ways in which technology can enhance learning both in institutional and informal settings are that :

1. it can facilitate collaborative learning, between different sites, institutions or different countries.
2. it can provide access to resource materials, through the world wide web and distribute them on line or via CD-rom.
3. it facilitates electronic publishing and production of materials.
4. it enables tutors and/or students to link up for mutual support.
5. it enhances people's process skills through the process of learning.
6. it provides a record of the process and enables analysis of the process which will assist in the improvement of teaching/learning.
7. it extends the time-frame of learning, and provides an understanding of the needs beyond the group.
8. for people who have been rejected in earlier learning, it can provide a private and      
   non-threatening re-entry into education.

What is lacking are `good models of learning' which are enhanced by technology, working models of courses which have been made `better than before'. While reviews of research show that there are some excellent pilots, they lack critical mass, secure funding and therefore the likelihood of transferability. It is desirable to promote and secure funding for more research into learning models using technology, whether by building on current ESRC funded research or perhaps through a Research and Development programme linked to the UfI. There is still much to be discovered about how people learn using different technologies, particularly in relation to interactivity, and how materials can be developed and structured to enable all learners to make effective use of them.

It is also necessary to move on from short-term funding of exemplar programmes or of pilot projects, where the short-term funding does not match the optimistic project objectives set, to larger scale projects which include additional resources for implementation and plan for scalability.

4 Changing software and course materials

Allied to this is the need for more and better software and learning materials. A parallel taskforce has been asked to work on the business case for developing learning software and this is, therefore, not discussed in detail in this report. The market for educational software is not yet well developed, and indeed has been described as dislocated. That task force report notes that the market has not yet reached critical mass, that suppliers are mainly operating sub-optimally as businesses, and that buyers, usually educators, are unable to procure effectively. The report offers a number of reasons: inexperience and lack of confidence in making software purchasing decisions, limited training and familiarity with learning software within the teaching/learning context, its perceived high cost, and no framework against which to assess value for money, and no trusted source of information about how to assess the appropriateness of software in an accessible, reliable and up-to date format. On top of this `piracy of copyrighted software is rife, though most of it inadvertent’, and therefore many buyers do not recognise the true value of the products. The Internet, the task force notes, exacerbates this situation by offering free content which is often of poor quality.

The Higginson report on learning technologies in FE (1996) suggested that the development of much educational software and course-ware would have to be left to the commercial market. Obviously it is to be expected that commercial providers will play a significant role in its provision, and current UfI planning assumes this. However, technology-based materials usually require heavy up-front investment, which implies collaboration between partners Previous initiatives such as the Open Tech and the Open College suggest that it is not possible to rely only on commercial interests to develop the necessary range of materials. While some segments of the market may be large enough for commercial exploitation, other subject areas and target groups are likely to need partnership and collaboration. The Open Learning Foundation (formerly the Open Polytechnic) has pioneered encouraging mechanisms for collaboration in the development of learning materials through partnerships among its members, though it has not yet produced much material designed ab initio in electronic formats. Similarly, 150 out of 450 FE colleges are linked in a consortium (FENC) to collaborate in the development and distribution of learning materials. Bespoke materials are being developed for particular training applications including materials for students with disabilities working from home.

It will be necessary to encourage the development of publicly-funded collaboratively produced learning materials which are available for public service use and adaptation on reasonable and equitable terms. This will require the working out of a charging model which is transparent, automatic and cheap to operate and equitable to the parties involved. It raises, for example, the problem as to how collaborating partners ensure the protection of their own material. Issues of intellectual property and copyright arrangements require urgent further work.

Increasingly lecturers, tutors and teachers will choose to put together their own materials from a variety of sources, perhaps as resource packs with learners’ study-guides, inserting or adapting case-studies or local examples as appropriate. Templates and authoring tools to assist such flexible and individualised provision are themselves an important software development in the market. Appendix 2 provides a short review of some of the considerations involved when considering a large scale development and deployment of education/training materials.

Open standards are needed for the protocols which specify the format of the information exchanged between courseware, and applications software which manages the learning environment. An important example is the progress-tracking information within a specific programme for an individual student. If there is an international open standard, then all courseware, from various content providers, can be tracked using a consistent protocol. It will facilitate the tracking of learners. International open standards are also vital to provide an economic market for products, and to reduce the training overheads for learners to be able to access materials.

A significant model of public/private collaboration to learn from is the US EDUCOM Instructional Management Systems (IMS) project, which is a partnership of academic, commercial and governmental organisations designed to put in place the underpinnings for Internet-based education. Its goal is the widespread adoption of a set of specifications that will allow distributed learning environments to work together to broaden the reach of educational content and tools. If agreement can be reached on basic specifications, such activities as locating and using educational content, tracking student progress, and communicating and exchanging student records between systems will be improved.

The basic premise of the IMS is that everybody will gain if standards are available freely and openly. The project is developing and distributing free a prototype to demonstrate the potential of these specifications and making tools, training and other assistance available to developers who can use the prototype as a basis for product development. Set up as a non-profit consortium, stakeholders include educational institutions, standards organisations, government agencies, software publishers and courseware developers. Commercial partners include IBM Education, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. There is interest and would be merit in bringing in UK educational partners or considering a UK analogue.

The danger is that the UK creates a set of standards which do not match emerging world-wide standards/protocols. Not conforming to international standards would damage the UK-based educational software industry, raise the cost of provision in the UK, hinder transferability and reduce choice for learners.

In the short term, technology is already changing the way in which the vast mass of open learning materials are currently produced. It is already being used to enhance, speed up and create more flexibility in the conventional delivery of paper-based texts. Having masters of texts stored electronically, allowing for just-in-time printing combined with sophisticated word-processing and desk-top publishing, has enhanced the quality and reduced the costs involved. E-mail/internet networking is, at the same time, allowing cooperation in writing and editing texts.

5 Changing learners

If we accept that lifelong learning is, to most people, not a philosophy, nor a sector of provision, then we suggest that its main goal is to provide a system or a framework to enable adults to take part in education or training throughout their lives, as they need and choose. The main point to remember is that the majority of adult learners do not study full-time, but study part-time, in their own free time. They are usually combining studies with work or caring for their families and are likely to be studying at or near their place of work or near where they live.

Social Trends (1997) shows, for 1994-5, the numbers of all students studying full-time and part-time in further and higher education, analysed by gender and separating further education, under-graduate and post-graduate higher education. Taken as a whole, there are more part-timers than full-timers and more of these are in further rather than in higher education. Among full-time students, males dominate in each of the three levels, with 48% compared with 40% overall. Among part-time students, however, women dominate overall, (60% compared with 52%) caused entirely by the larger numbers of women in part-time further education. Given the fact that these figures include all in further and higher education and not just mature students, the dominance of part-timers is even more surprising.  

Table 1 : Enrolments in further and higher education by type of course and gender, 1994-5 excluding adult education centres

The majority of students in higher education study full-time, and an increasing number of them are classed as mature students i.e. aged 21 years or more. Figures for attendance in 1996/7 show 63% overall studying full-time of whom 34% are young and 29% are mature. Of the 37% who are studying part-time, the vast majority (34%) are mature and only 3% are 18-21.

The 20s, 30s and 40s are the key decades for adult learning, though substantial groups continue to learn in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Younger adults engage more in work-related learning, while older adults may study for a wider variety of reasons and in a wider variety of places. Combining studies with working and family life, as most adult learners have to do, places accessible and flexible provision at a premium. The barriers to access for adult learning are well-documented: the major issues include barriers of time and place, of motivation and confidence, and of finance and lack of appropriate provision and support. Participation rates in education and training vary across age-groups, across social class groupings and even across regions to an extent that is not consistent with equity, as The Learning Divide shows. (Sargant 1997).

The challenge is to increase demand and encourage participation. Historically, the provision of education and training for adults has not been demand-led but has been offered to learners on providers' terms, in their own time and place and under specified assessment and certification arrangements. Educational institutions have had a monopoly of supply, backed up by control over admissions and financing arrangements, and often by professional control of standards and of entry to the labour market. While this may have been acceptable when post-school education was the preserve of a small and young elite, it is not acceptable as we move towards lifelong learning with large numbers coming in and out of education and training throughout their lives, and the state, the individual and their families as well as employers all taking a share of financial responsibility for it.

Many adults who study part-time pay for themselves, and increasingly make their own choices of when, where and how to learn. It is the increase in individual choice, combined with new opportunities, often provided through new technologies, which makes it necessary for providers to focus firmly on the nature of individual demand. At the same time, it is notoriously difficult to research and predict demand, though market research and needs analysis does improve on guess-work. The typical economic market-place assumption that demand creates supply does not work well in education. The market is by no means a perfect one, with imperfect information for the learner of what is available and financial and other barriers to access for many in the most educational need. Often potential demand is latent until encouraged in appropriate ways. There are important instances ranging from adult literacy to the Open University where the supply had to be made available before people could be encouraged to exercise individual demand. Broadcasting played an important role with both of these, and such partnerships should be developed further.

Demand itself is made up of a composite of factors. Increasingly, the development of individual demand involves the encouragement of personal initiative and responsibility in terms of choosing and shaping the educational pathways best suited to people's individual needs. It assumes that provision will become more flexible, that people will develop individual learning plans, perhaps with mentors, and that learning accounts or other entitlements will be available. Individuals will also require initial independent advice and guidance, for example through Learning Direct, the new telephone help-line and learning support either face-to-face, or increasingly through phone-lines and the Internet.

Work-place based learning will also be of increasing importance as for many adults their education/ training will be encouraged or dictated by their employer, who will usually support it financially. Other people need to finance their own learning, as it may not be related to their current employment and indeed may be undertaken in order to upskill themselves or change jobs. Increasingly employers are offering and encouraging learning through open or distance learning, through computer software packages, CD-roms, videos or TV programmes, audio-tapes, cassettes or CDs, and many larger companies now have on-site open learning centres. On-line remote training is likely to become particularly useful for SMEs , but it will require investment and training to develop it.

The extension of work-place based learning to general education breaks significant barriers for many people, including the all important one of motivation. The exciting advantage of work-place based learning is that facilities which are necessary for any modern company are effectively the same as those needed for modern telematics-driven learning. The suggestion that equipment could be used outside working hours by learners whether for vocational or general learning makes good economic and educational sense. The need for in-house support for learning is particularly great in small and medium-sized companies, and it is feasible to suggest that such SMEs should be actively encouraged by their local TECs to kit up a room to double as a study-room for their workers to use. Such encouragement could be matched by policies to encourage individual up-skilling and participation, with tax rebates for course fees and a requirement through IIP to ensure, in particular, the inclusion of computer skills with appropriate accreditation, as a contribution to the NTETS targets.

In the same way, the computing and telematics facilities increasingly installed in schools need to be made available out-of-school hours to parents, governors, local voluntary organisations and other sections of local communities. Computers become obsolete only too quickly and it makes good sense to use them as intensively as possible since their effective life is so short.

With imagination and investment, new communications technologies can bring learning nearer to people offering increased flexibility and choice. However, these advantages have a cost attached to them and increasingly the cost is one to be met by individuals rather than the community. Historically learning has been made available to learners free at the point of use, and paid for by the community, whether as taxpayers or ratepayers. While this system is still accepted at school level, for post-school education and training the trend is increasingly towards funding the learner, but at the same time expecting employers and learners to pay substantial contributions themselves, either directly in fees or through systems of grants/loans. With new technologies, the cost of basic access is already high, and the concern is that though technology may reduce barriers of time and place offering increased flexibility and choice, these advantages may well be cancelled out by the major disadvantage of the increased cost of providing the learning through `technology’. Strategies need to be found to deal with this danger to avoid increasing educational disadvantage for many.

6 Changing Local Learning Spaces

What do we mean by "user-friendly public spaces"? There are many different models that could be regarded as valuable in improving local access to technology-enriched learning, as the DFEE report on IT Awareness-raising for adults shows. (Clarke, 1998) We are not advocating the creation of a chain of educational fast-food stores, designed to a pre-determined pattern, but support for local initiatives which are responsive to local need and local opportunities. An access centre in a former pit village in Derbyshire would look very different from a similar space in suburban South London. What is appropriate and attractive to an 18-year-old steeped in local club culture would be very different to that found comfortable by an older low-paid clerical worker looking for new skills.

Such centres could also be planned for in schools, offering accessible learning spaces for parents and other adults providing modest additional resources could be made available to allow for longer opening hours, additional security etc. They could conceivably be in pubs, clubs, cafes, rural post offices or sports clubs, anywhere that provides a local community focus. They should link with the OU’s network of study centres and the planned UfI network. Buses or mobile libraries could be kitted up to take `learning spaces’ to people, providing outreach to learning communities and isolated groups.

There is a clear need and demand for locally available, accessible IT and telematics resources. Ideally these need to be linked into learning opportunities. We cannot assume that everyone has, or will have in the near future, easy access from the home to computers, telephone lines or even bank accounts. Nor can we assume the most basic of skills in the use of computer technology. Accessibility is not simply a question of available equipment and technical services, but requires a wide range of support involving encouragement, guidance, and ‘contextual’ education in the application of IT. Perhaps most importantly, we should not underestimate the lack of confidence and sense of inadequacy faced by those who feel excluded from the ‘information society’.

It is essential that there are points of local access to a chain of learning enhanced by technology, along which people can easily move through confidence-building, guidance-seeking, informal learning, and structured learning environments. Such centres should not be isolated and only operate on their own, but work within a broader network of provision of technology-enriched learning - whether at the home, the workplace, or college or in the community.

The national network of local libraries, information services, museums and galleries offer a rich and varied stimulant to learning, and a crucial source of referral and information on learning opportunities. The technology enables and demands an even closer relationship between information and education provision, and the divisions are increasingly blurred. Nevertheless, there are important distinctions between the two disciplines, particularly in the staff skills required. There is much to be gained from mutual support between the library and information networks, and a network of local learning centres. For the individual learner, the ease of movement from one environment to another is a crucial link in the learning chain.

There are some key guiding principles :

1. by "access" we mean access to learning opportunities for adults made possible by the application of technology. We do not simply mean access to the technology itself, important as that is;

2. as a matter of principle, there should be an accessible IT-based centre available to all within a certain public transport travelling time, say 45 minutes;

3. the ‘access centres’ should offer a mix of open-door informal education and advice, alongside more formal educational provision, with clearly developed progression routes and educational guidance for users/participants;

4. experience has shown that many of the most successful of such centres are established or managed by organisations with demonstrable roots in the local community, whether they be voluntary organisations, arts/media groups, church-based community services, local authority services, libraries, TECs or local schools/colleges;

5. there must be modest though sufficient resources to ensure that at least ‘returning to learn’, advice and guidance provision and learning support is available free of charge;

6. there should be considerable flexibility in defining the ‘community’ served by such spaces, enabling provision in specific neighbourhoods, or serving more specialised needs of parts of the community, such as area or city-wide provision for women, ethnic minorities, young unemployed, micro-enterprises, etc;

7. such centres should not just offer an agenda of IT training and computer studies, but rather a full range of educational opportunities which are significantly enhanced or improved through the sensitive and appropriate application of technology;

8. considerable encouragement must be given to the use of internet-mediated and multi-media education techniques designed or adapted to the context of voluntary sector and community-based, often informal, education. This should be supported at a national level, through pilot distance-learning schemes, curriculum development and tutor training for example;

9. at the same time it must be recognised that the highest demand, as experienced by those organisations already attempting to provide local access, continues to be for basic IT skills. As Internet awareness has gathered pace over the last four or five years, this now includes demand for basic telematics skills, but a high proportion of demand remains for essential basic keyboard skills - and for older people in particular, seems set to remain so;

10. experience has also shown that local access centres will frequently require local champions and the assistance of well-connected "marriage brokers" in constructing the necessary partnerships, particularly those organisations and individuals that have experience in working with and between the main local or regional interest groups. These include employers in the telecoms, IT and media industries; universities and major colleges; government departments; training agencies etc. It is highly desirable that local authorities, emergent regional development structures and others are centrally involved in supporting the development of networks of access centres. There are good examples (Manchester, Kirklees, Bristol, etc.) of active encouragement for local access, from which valuable lessons can be drawn;

11. there should be good quality training and support for educators and managers employed to supervise and service access centres, and nationally kite-marked standards for both staff skills and physical resources, backed up through national publicity and awareness campaigns;

12. once accredited, kite-marked or otherwise recognised as accessible spaces for learning, such centres should be afforded the technical facilities, including connection to the National Grid for Learning, enjoyed by schools, colleges or universities.

How should such centres be financed?

Funding issues include the set-up of the project, its accommodation and purchase of equipment, equipment maintenance and replacement, and the cost of staff including their training. Existing experience of funding such centres is not encouraging. The recent study IT Awareness-raising for adults (Clarke,1998) records that few IT projects have been in operation for more than three years, that many have constant problems seeking funds and tend to have been set up using short-term funding such as City Challenge or ESF monies. Such projects of their nature take time to build up, and staff, usually on short-term contracts, are insecure and know they are at risk as their contracts approach their end date. Despite this, various experimental or pilot local centres, led by a variety of organisations, have demonstrated considerable ingenuity and creativity in partnership-financing of such projects, and there are considerable numbers of public, voluntary and private sector institutions prepared to offer financial or practical support.

Experience so far has shown that the financing of local access centres needs to be based on longer-term partnership arrangements, underpinned by national co-ordination and support, including nationally negotiated arrangements with the European Union, and strong co-ordination between government departments. Many otherwise excellent examples of local access centres have foundered or been much weakened through the constant need to renegotiate or seek new finances.

The pressing need for financial support can also lead to such centres being required constantly to reinvent themselves or redefine their objectives, according to the funding opportunities presented. Although their purpose is the same, local accessible spaces, by their very nature, can be (and are) marketed in an astonishing variety of ways; initiatives in local community development, economic development, further education, community education, community information, vocational training, support for the long-term unemployed, inner-city regeneration, rural development and so on.

Such diversity can be a positive asset. With a nationally-determined policy framework of support, and backed up with national infrastructures, such as the University for Industry, the National Grid for Learning, public educational broadcasting, staff training programmes, accreditation and kite-marking etc., it becomes far easier for national and local partnerships to be constructed and sustained.

Considerable finance is required for the purchase of equipment which needs regular replacing after increasingly short intervals. Local centres should be encouraged to consider leasing arrangements for equipment and technical services (along with maintenance, training and support) rather than treating computers as an item of capital expenditure. Organisations offering financial support should review their criteria for funding, where necessary, to ensure that this is taken into account.

Local centres should also be encouraged to give careful thought to the quality and quantity of equipment, rather than adopt a crude learner to machine ratio, which often leads to machines lying idle. Often it is better to have fewer, better quality machines, but with great care taken in the creation of a supportive environment, both organisational and physical. Appendix 3 provides a basic classification of distributed learning models, with a description of the hardware and its appropriateness for different settings.

7 Changing Learning Opportunities at Work

Employers’ active support is vital for the success of any new policies and projects associated with lifelong learning in the workplace. This is true for both large and small businesses. In this section we examine some of the key issues which must be addressed in order to ensure that employers find any new propositions both practical and attractive. Employers will need to change their attitudes to learning at work as the distinction between learning and work will gradually disappear. Information processing and synthesis will require process skills but the product will be new knowledge and competence both for the individual and the company. This will combine with the increasing flexibility of where people work. Home-based workers or mobile workers will be able to operate in `as if’ environments as part of the norm rather than as an exception. Some of the learning will be desk-top-based and some will be through more specialised learning centres. Much of it will be networked.

The workplace as a base for learning will be of increasing importance for adults throughout their working lives. This learning will be encouraged and frequently dictated by their employers, usually with financial support from them. Many large companies have already started to employ technology-based learning to upskill their workforce. The types of technology involved tend to be those already associated with modern companies, and already available in the work-place for other reasons.

Many larger employers already provide an open learning centre in the workplace, and may open it to associated companies or suppliers. There is also increasing experience, particularly among large employers of the value of non-work-related `employee education and personal development’ (EDAP) schemes. These encourage general learning, increasing confidence and motivation, and frequently lead on to more advanced learning. Employers should be encouraged to take a generous view of learning in the work place, and also allow use of study facilities out of working hours.

Related to this, we have argued earlier in the text that small to medium sized companies should be encouraged by their local TEC/LEC to equip a room for use by their workers as a place of learning, and that Investors in People targets and protocols for SMEs should include support for IT skills.

Potential attractions for employers

It is conventional to assume that employers will find new training opportunities attractive in terms of uplifting the skills of their employees, in order to make them more effective and productive. However, what is really attractive to many employers is the opportunity to reduce the costs of training, or to improve its effectiveness/speed of implementation (especially in support of large mission critical projects). With new technology based learning methods, training costs and the actual time spent on each training event can be reduced, for example, by avoiding the cost of hotels, travel and time off-the-job. They allow for `just-in-time’ rather than `just-in-case’ training and offer consistent quality of training which can be applied to large populations of employees quickly when required. They also offer individualised `just for you/me’ training options. As company networks and systems become more integrated, appraisal procedures and training events can be captured as part of a single process.

The advantages associated with cost reduction do, however, assume that training costs are being incurred in the first case, which unfortunately is not always the case!

A significant potential advantage of technology assisted training in the work place is that training become accessible and practicable for particular key groups of employees, for whom conventional procedures have been logistically impracticable, for example for mobile or shift workers, or for large groups of geographically dispersed part-time staff.

Recent projects involving small and medium sized businesses e.g. some Adapt-funded learning projects led by consortiums of FE Colleges, have discovered that the smaller employer is often more attracted by a broader package of value added services delivered through the same technology. As well as education and training, these may consist of additional on-line local/regional business information services and on-line business forums, provided in collaboration with the local Business Link/Enterprise Agency/Chamber of Commerce. Examples of such successful projects include those in Newham, Fife and Lauder FE Colleges.

Smaller businesses, in particular, need to be provided with good (easy to access) on-line and hard copy information on current available local training courses, together with information on any supportive funding available. Smaller companies do not normally employ someone in the role of training manager, who would have the time to devote to collation of such information.

Larger companies will be increasingly interested in the ability of the learning systems proposed to interface into their own internal HR systems, for staff development and appraisal. Similarly large companies will be attracted by any functions within the learning system which permit skills assessment by job function, across employee populations, such that skill gaps and training needs analyses can be provided in critical skill areas.

Integration/interface of external training systems to internal systems

In small companies, examples can be found where rooms have been set aside as dedicated training rooms for employees, with one or two PCs, linked to the local FE college for

tutor support, providing a wide variety of training courses (e.g. Fife College). What is critical here is the provision of a total solution to the needs of the small business, including technical support. This will be facilitated through the growth of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), such as the one already set up in Fife and Tayside (FATMAN), (Law, 1998).

Small companies (and small sites of larger companies) cannot typically justify the cost of a dedicated high speed telecommunications link to the training provider, and therefore technical limitations are immediately placed on the volume of rich multimedia training material which can be downloaded electronically. The current solution is to send CD-roms in the mail, and to use the available low bandwidth telephone links for tutor e-mail, progress tracking, limited courseware updates, WWW access, etc. Any envisaged systems must either continue to support this compromise method of delivering physical materials, or offer an inexpensive universal/pervasive high bandwidth solution to all potential users.

A consideration for large and medium sized companies with adequate bandwidth and a server is the ability to download training materials and applications on to their in-house learning centres. Requests for learning software can be registered and down-loaded overnight ready for use the next day. Increasingly this will also be possible for SMEs and should be a service provided by the UfI

There are wider implications of such developments which offer centralised resources but local delivery and assessment. The materials will have to meet world standards and protocols, and offer transferable/ international accreditation. There are likely to be issues of courseware pricing mechanisms and copyright protection. It will be important for the employer to receive regular management information on training being undertaken by their staff, including utilisation rates and progress information.

Potential disincentives for employers

If new work based training systems result in inappropriate use of staff time, then the support of employers for such new initiatives will be significantly reduced. There is a current prevailing concern amongst many employers that completely open access to the Internet during work time can lead to abuse of staff time, lack of security, and general loss of productivity. Such concerns need to be fully explored and recognised in the design of any new work based training provision. It is suggested that the right to technology access may be a learner perk given by employers and to be negotiated by employees’ representatives. This may become a major factor in making a particular job or company attractive or not. The problem then will be the lack of access for those out of work or in "low facility" jobs. It is clear that the vast majority of current access to the Internet is through the workplace. This supports the argument for local access centres in further education colleges and public libraries offering services to small and medium size enterprises as well as to individuals not in work.

Some large employers (particularly multinationals) will increasingly become interested in the conformance of learning materials and systems to emerging international standards. A narrow standards base may become a real disincentive for such large employers, particularly where they wish to invest their own resources in development of tailored training materials.

Employee rights in employment

Issues may arise in relation to an employee’s right to training in the workplace and/or their right of access to the Internet. How can this be balanced against the needs and concerns of employers? How can, for example, an individual exercise his or her right to spend any individual learning account credit on his or her own choice of learning, regardless of employer support for a particular choice of learning programme? Trade Unions probably have a role to play here in clarifying the issues and negotiating with employers.

Financial support for learning in the workplace

Some capital and revenue investment will be needed by employers, large and small, to equip for work based learning, and to provide ongoing support and maintenance of such facilities. Tax breaks, or grants, for companies willing to invest in such facilities may be appropriate, in order to achieve a broad change of behaviour by employers.

While it is clear that there are no proposals to legislate to place duties on employers to support workplace based learning, it is desirable to develop a structure of expectation of support to which good employers should be expected to conform, with appropriate access to financial and other incentives and support in order that barriers to access to learning in the workplace are minimised. TECs and LECs have a major role to play in encouraging this, as will the UfI.

8 Changing institutions

Colleges and other major educational institutions know they will have to change fundamentally to respond to and support individual learners as they wish to re-enter learning and update their skills.

Radical change will require preparedness for thorough going innovation by all staff, and this will need to be recognised by managers in colleges and by Government through funding methodologies and new initiatives. New ways of learning, and the rapid developments in learning technologies, both offering added value and enhancing the learning experience, will have to underpin policies in and affecting such institutions. IT strategies will need to be designed and regularly updated to reflect changes in technology to facilitate the delivery of courses whether on-site or on-line with tutors increasingly supporting learners via electronic communication systems.

Access and learner support

Colleges and universities will expect to play a key role in offering and supporting lifelong learning. Much learning will itself be about or involve the use of learning technologies. Institutions will need to ensure that access gives opportunities for flexible, modular based/unit learning and accreditation, probably through enhanced use of learning centres based in institutions, in the community and in the work place, through desktop and other technologies. Many colleges already offer opportunities in outlying centres or in community settings, using school premises and also opening at weekends and holiday times.

The provision offered to learners will include access to a range of technologies, and continuing tutor support, probably by telephone or on line as well as face to face. The learner will need to feel comfortable and not isolated in the learning environment and confident that the learning context will change as learners progress and their needs change. Such variety will affect the way the learner perceives an organisation and what he or she expects of it.

Colleges and universities will also need to respond where the learner chooses to access programmes from home, and requires appropriate support throughout the learning process. Increasingly learners will want access to learning via the internet or cable and organisations will have to develop strategies to meet that demand. The development of MANS with a more open remit than JANET to work with colleges, libraries and other education/training bodies regionally should assist this.

As more sophisticated technologies become available, support systems will need to adapt to support them. Colleges will need to use and make available materials in multimedia format, with support integrated into on-line and E-mail facilities. Flexible access will demand a range of approaches from initial advice and guidance, which will need to be integrated into continuing provision and progression routes for learners.

Many colleges are already recognised for their flexibility in offering courses to a wide range of clients including companies and individuals. The range of courses and added value services needs to expand and develop to meet the needs of clients whose objective is to up skill their workforce quickly and cost effectively.

Most learners will not want courses as we have known and used them. The momentum for unitised programmes with multiple pathways, and time scales appropriate to the individual, will grow. The learning materials developed will be focused on responding to unitised programmes and will require some quality approval, and possible kite marking. Learners will increasingly want self-assessment to check on entry-levels to courses as well as assessment of prior experiential learning.

Learners will want and require programmes of learning which offer approved accreditation. This will offer challenges for present accreditation systems, as Government will be concerned that approved accreditation supports the development of key skills learning, as well as focused vocational and skill based learning. Accrediting bodies will doubtless respond to the market, whilst taking note of Government objectives. Institutions will need to ensure that accreditation is relevant to the needs of individual learners.

Partnerships

Institutions will not be able to expect staff to develop learning materials around particular curriculum elements on their own. Learning technology based materials of quality will increasingly be developed on a collaborative basis, in partnership with other institutions and organisations, but frequently in collaboration with commercial producers who are prepared to invest money in product development. Often the material being used will not be primarily intended for learning and teaching purposes, but will be modified from other purposes. Colleges will need to develop teams of staff within the organisation bringing a range of skills with them to be able to produce successful integrated products. The development of the University for Industry emphasises the need for collaboration between a range of providers and in the early stages small and medium sized companies who will determine the products and services they need.

Access to equipment will similarly be aided by collaborative partnerships, often with external suppliers. Staff will need to co-operate across institutional boundaries, and across school, further education and higher education boundaries, as well as with local outreach centres, to meet particular needs. Flexibility with staff structures within institutions will be key to the success of long term partnerships.

Successful partnerships have been developed between organisations across Europe aided by numerous EC programmes involving further education, higher education, Training and Enterprise Councils and global commercial companies. Libraries increasingly play central roles in major initiatives with other European partners, working strategically through world wide networks. Collaboration globally is developing through broadcasting and other media organisations, particularly where English is used as the main language for communication.

Funding

Colleges and higher education institutions will face major challenges in providing adequate funding for technologically based lifelong learning opportunities, even though the Government does also expect both employers and individuals to make a greater contribution themselves. Institutional leaders will need to adopt carefully considered strategies to ensure appropriate levels of technical infrastructure and staffing. Government will need to recognise that colleges and universities will have to be adequately resourced in these equipment focused areas, and offer comparable support to that promised to schools.

Many colleges, unless they are in receipt of European funds, are unable to fund both their technical infrastructures and also maintain their existing levels of equipment at the moment. (FEFC,1998) It will be a waste of existing valuable expertise and premises if additional resources are not found. Of course, if Government is prepared to find additional resources, it will want to see those resources focused and set against clear targets.

9 Changing staff roles

The roles and expectation of staff in colleges, universities and other educational institutions will change substantially. The last decade, and especially the last five years, has seen "teaching" staff asked to undertake significantly changed approaches to their work: much work is now with companies, at times and places convenient to those companies. Government-required economies have led to reductions in time available for traditional teaching and learning methods, and the growth of resource based, open and distance learning contexts. In the future, teaching staff will need to be prepared to undertake ever more changing work patterns to meet the needs of learners. More of that learning will be at a distance, not bound by time and place, and is likely to be increasingly based on learning technologies. Other pressures for change, visible within the broader FE context, and especially around reaching non traditional client groups and promoting inclusive, differentiated learning will run alongside.

Many younger learners will already have understanding, confidence and preferences for using modes of learning based around audio visual materials, information technology mediated materials, and the internet. Many learners in employment, seeking further and higher education accreditation, will also already be accustomed to using information technology based materials in their working lives. This places an additional demand on staff to be ahead of, or at least up with the game.

We are likely to see a return to the role of "academic" tutor, mentor or learning manager, who organises, plans, and obtains programmes of learning and skill acquisition for the individual learner. The role is a long standing one, though latterly neglected. The role requirement will mean there is a need to define case loads and changed skill needs, and to create new and powerful delegated roles within institutions. Such staff will depend upon managers of resource rich learning contexts, libraries, workshops, open learning centres, and employment relevant experience areas, able to provide for the individual needs of a wide variety of learners, each on a personal learning programme. Institutions will have assessment and accreditation centres, staffed by appropriate trained staff and able to accredit prior experiential learning.

These role changes are already happening in many colleges and some parts of universities. The new consideration is around the developing roles of creators of new learning materials. Sometimes they will be originators of new material, appropriate for an institution’s particular learners. Sometimes they will be skilled in customising or amending materials available on the open market or produced by others. In most cases they will work in collaboration, sometimes throughout the further and higher education field, or at least across institutions.

Staff not hitherto perceived as "teachers" are likely to have enhanced roles as specialist guidance workers, as technically specialist materials producers, as systems maintainers, as work place assessors, and as highly skilled support workers. The boundaries between teachers and non teachers will become eroded. These changes will certainly produce tensions and uncertainties of role, and challenges for managers.

Educational institutions will seek to recreate themselves as learning organisations in the face of such significant changes in learner needs, modes of delivery and staff functions. Staff must be given confidence and new skills to deal with the inevitable uncertainties of significant change. No institution is likely to proceed in isolation, and with its commitment to local colleges and local adult education services, and to some elements of regionalism, the Government will be concerned to ensure that staff development and related institutional development will not become grossly uneven over the country because some institutions are far ahead of others. Staff development and institutional development will require visionary approaches as well as cost effective ones, and considerable support for all staff. Staff development will include closer collaboration with employers, and include appropriate continuing updating of learning technology skills together with its certification. Those skills will be a compulsory part of the expectation of employees.

Educational institutions are unlikely to be able to recruit and keep staff with specialist skills in particular areas, and certainly in areas of advanced materials development. Such staff will need to be employed on a consultancy basis, and paid well, or perhaps to be established in specialist units owned by an institution or a group of institutions.

Managers

Managers will face the challenge of redefining what their institutions are. They will ask themselves whether the buildings they have sought to improve, especially in the years since incorporation, are likely to be relevant in the same ways in the future, and whether their equipment funding priorities are right. Institutions will require strategic planning for information technology based and individually focused learning, especially given that educational institutions will operate well behind the most advanced industry-based technology. Managers will need to communicate with staff and learners about the pressures and opportunities of learning in changed environments, not least because it is probable that there will be a greater gulf between younger learners and older learners in the modes and styles of learning they need. Managers will face challenges of measuring staff work load and staff targeting and achievement, and challenges in moving necessary bureaucratic systems into more delegated and technology rich contexts.

10 Changing delivery systems : the continuing role of broadcasting

In the excitement of the approaching digital age of communications it is critical that the power of broadcasting with its universal reach and vital role of public service broadcasting is recognised and maintained. Terrestrial broadcasting reaches people free at the point of use and is for most people their main access to current affairs, family, parenting and community education, education for citizenship, and to the heritage of arts and culture. Major campaigns such as health and home safety, basic skills, family literacy and Adult Learners Week's campaigns to reach the unemployed and encourage access to learning rely on broadcasting to reach mass audiences. Narrowcasting and specialist channels are not a substitute for broadcasting, they are needed as well.

Public service broadcasters can help prevent the creation of information elites, generating social cohesion, overcoming increasing feelings of impotence and scepticism and helping to maintain interest in citizenship and public debate. Broadcasting is of crucial importance in reaching those who might feel excluded: in providing essential motivation, confidence-building, in creating a demand for learning and in helping people come to terms with a society in a time of accelerating technological change. It will continue to be particularly important for younger, poorer and older people, for people in rural areas and people with special needs.

The traditions of educational programming on the BBC and Channel4/S4C can play a significant role in bridging the ‘learning divide' and the gap between the information rich and information poor. Educational programming must continue to be a central feature of public service broadcasting, and will continue to need to be held in place by appropriate regulation if and when analogue terrestrial broadcasting is replaced by digital broadcasting. Indeed, the requirements for education which were removed from ITV under the 1990 Act should be reinstated and extended to Channel 5.

In addition, government with the ITC should reconsider urgently the lack of any requirement and proposals for any provision of any educational provision by the new commercial digital broadcasters. It is a supreme irony that just as lifelong learning moves up the political agenda and its need is recognised, that the new commercial multiplex franchisees with technologies which are particularly suited to its delivery are not planning to offer it, either as part of existing channels or as a specialist education/training channel.

At the same time, existing public service broadcasters will need to ensure that new technologies are exploited for the public good, creating opportunities and innovatory models of learning/teaching and creating markets to spread materials which other players can then utilise. Encouraging examples are the BBC's plans for a digital learning channel, BBC Learning, and the plans for the Digital College in Wales. Both the BBC and Channel 4 are already developing imaginative uses of the Internet.

Digital technology will undoubtedly bring some benefits, most obviously more channels and some interactivity. At the same time it will bring a number of risks, particularly if analogue channels are withdrawn early and before the market for digital has reached a high enough proportion of the population. Though early plans indicate that set-top boxes will be subsidised, many older, younger and poorer people are likely to be excluded. A quite different risk is that the globalisation of culture will threaten national identities, and that powerful gateway controllers will restrain rather than promote diversity: that more will not mean more choice, but more of the same. The risk is that a two class society will be created, with the information rich ready and able to pay for the increasingly expensive media and the information poor who cannot. For those who wish to learn, there is a real danger that many will be excluded from the information revolution by price, demographics, or a previous negative experience of learning and lack of interest and of motivation.

Public service broadcasters who are committed to creating learning opportunities will need to:

It is suggested that the use of digital broadcasting and set-top boxes will provide a cost-effective strategy for delivering learning and that materials can be broadcast and down-loaded. This requires a commitment from broadcasters that such material will be broadcast free-to-air, a commitment that has not yet been made. Experience suggests that firm regulation is needed to ensure that lifelong learning needs are taken account of by broadcasters.

Using broadcasting to best effect: working in partnership

Broadcasters themselves are becoming increasingly sophisticated at reaching and hooking people in. Broadcasting is particularly effective when it is planned in relation to other materials in an integrated campaign. The issue for educators and learners is how to use the national and regional broadcasting to the best effect for groups and individuals locally. Put the other way, how do national broadcasters optimise their contribution to locally delivered opportunities and structures?

Practical experience of successful campaigns involving broadcasters and local groups and provision is now well established. There is much to be gained from linking in networks of local centres to support individuals and learning in the home. The recent success of Computers Don't Bite, linked in with the 1997 Adult Learners' Week, involved public libraries, local centres, colleges and schools, attracted in 90,000 people for taster sessions in basic IT skills and is being repeated this year. The BBC’s Family Literacy campaign was also extremely successful, though the formula does not work uniformly as the numeracy initiative showed.

The fact that collaboration and partnership are back on the agenda is much to be welcomed. However, collaborative work is time-consuming, sometimes expensive, and in broadcasting has to be set in place quite early in the development of a project. There is enough experience of collaborative campaigns to be able to offer some advice :

1. a guide to best practice would be helpful: a check-list for preparation of centres in advance of a campaign, local tool-kits/questionnaires for partners/potential users, advice about public/ private partnerships. Advice on sets of processes/guidelines;
2. transparent procedures for linking with broadcasters are necessary so people know what they can expect. It is necessary to work in advance with partners e.g. timetables, advance warning;
3. there are more options available than people realise, for example in BBC national and local radio and local commercial radio and cable. There are, for example, education correspondents on BBC local radio;
4. conversion rates on campaigns differ. It is important to monitor conversion rates, and track the danger points at which people get lost/ fall out;
5. the quality of the welcome/the front desk is important, its perceived knowledge and competence as well as its friendliness. This relates also to the quality of the helpline. Libraries are a particularly strong and important partner for broadcasters for all these reasons;
6. great benefit can be obtained through shared marketing.

The proposal for a network of locally accessible learning centres, whether or not led by the UfI, could provide a valuable network of referral points for those stimulated by educational programming, in the broadest sense. They could, for example, provide Internet access to someone who wanted to visit a web site advertised at the end of a programme. At a more sophisticated level, they could provide direct local access to educational programming through the National Grid for Learning, backed up with discussion groups, Internet mediated distance learning or formal course provision. Broadcasters could, in partnership, provide a national profile for the local centres, either directly within programmes, or through on-line referrals via broadcasters' web-sites.

11 Changing delivery technologies

As new options become available, the challenge for educators is to choose what available technology is most suitable for the learning purpose : in other words, ‘horses for courses’. Technology is value-free; it simply provides a delivery system. The question which must be asked each time is : is it the best technology for the particular educational purpose? The answer will depend on the size and nature of the target group, the subject-matter, the educational task, the characteristics of the medium and the cost. It is vital to differentiate. New technologies often arrive before their potential uses are well understood, and are supported by commercial developers with an interest in the growth of their market. Some of the resistance to new technology has come from disappointed educators using a particular technology which was not suited to the relevant task in view. A continuing problem has been the temptation to allow the availability of the latest piece of technology to lead the project rather than the nature of the educational task, the most recent examples were the CD-rom and now the Internet.

Working at ‘low tech’ levels is less glamorous, but may reach more people at lower cost. For example, broadcasting, supplemented by video-recording, is ideal if it is desirable to reach very large numbers with an undifferentiated audio-visual message. CD-rom and video-on-demand are valuable where there is a large base of data to be linked with some, but not too much, interactivity, and it can be assumed that people have access to equipment. The postal service and the telephone system are universally available in homes, are cheap for the user and provide reasonable interactivity.

 Despite the hype in the newspaper and special supplements, the latest sophisticated technologies, multi-media, broadband, cable, the Internet, in mass learning terms are still in their infancy. Of course, they will become increasingly available and important, but over what time-scale and for what sorts of people? Ownership of and access to communications links is still very uneven (as Appendix 1 shows). In the shorter term, if wider access and participation is the goal, and we wish to reach new groups of people, including women returners, ethnic minorities, people in rural areas, the unemployed as well as people in small businesses, many of whom will want or need to learn at home, then it is sensible to use the technology which is already widely available and at reasonable cost, rather than leap-frogging to the more expensive technologies.

It is important to note that to date all significant large-scale open and distance learning initiatives, including the OU, still rely on print and the postal service for the main delivery of their course materials to their learners. And new technologies of course make their preparation, revision and often just-in-time printing much cheaper and more flexible.

Maintaining cost-effective strategies for mass access does not of course rule out the vital complementary strategy of developing the use of appropriate newer technology for appropriate purposes and target groups. Much work is going on in further and higher education to experiment with and develop on-line and technology-based learning. Several `virtual’ institutions are already promised. However, these moves need to be accompanied by urgent work on cost-effectiveness and sustainability.

While the Internet is mainly at this stage used through people’s workplace or through educational institutions, those who have access to it are in a position to use it find it valuable for a variety of purposes : for networking, for asynchronous teleconferencing, for collaborative production of materials, for researching, as a browsery, as well as for its current main use - E-mail. To develop these uses and also to engage in experimenting with virtual learning networks is at this stage important.

The critical issue is who pays and at what point in the process for new technologies and services. School-level education, as well as much of further and higher education has been free to the learner and paid for by the community, through the tax system. The same has been, for example true of broadcasting, though the tax is effectively a poll-tax. The OU has mainly taken advantage of technology already in the majority of people’s homes : TV, radio, telephones and more recently video-recorders. Increasingly, with new technologies, costs are being shifted directly to users and are not cheap to the user at home and the direct cost is usually concealed from the individuals at work since they do not pay themselves. To gain access to the Internet at home requires a high-grade pc, a phone line and a modem, with little change from £1000. The OU has decided that this cost-level is an acceptable price to demand from students as the entry-cost of some of its IT-based courses. It is already proving a barrier to access for some, and is unlikely to be an acceptable demand for most HE and FE to make of adult learners, particularly those studying part-time. It is possible that the arrival of new developments such as Web TV may allow wide groups of people to access the Internet more cheaply through set top boxes on their televisions if they do not also personally need or wish to have p.c. facilities.

Planning for the UfI is predicated on a learning network utilising new communications technology. This should certainly act as a spur and catalyst for new R&D both for the development of course materials and for the systems and administrative developments necessary to achieve features such as learning passports and individual learning accounts, and databases for effective guidance systems. However, it is unlikely that enough learning opportunities will be harnessed together for its purposes in the shorter term unless other lower tech existing and new materials are also pressed into service.

Satellite television and cable have so far not been seen as major players in education and training. Lessons from North America indicate serious potential for satellite delivery and developing regional structures which may make cable more relevant than it has been heretofore. Similarly, both TV and radio have local and regional structures which could be put to better use if there was a more local focus on provision. They could be particularly valuable, for example, with local family and community education, in reaching specific ethnic minority groups and with such projects as Learning Cities or if regional consortia develop.

The BBC, when it was set up was a vertically integrated monopoly provider of broadcasting, and to fund it through a flat rate licence fee made sense. Its monopoly was of course broken with the arrival of ITV and the vertical integration of production and transmission changed with the arrival of Channel 4. What changes with the combination of privatisation and new technologies is the disaggregation of the whole chain of production, transmission and reception and therefore financing. The issue of `who pays at what point in the process?’ changes to `who makes money at what point in the process? In a competitive market, a number of different players all contribute to the process, but all have to make money out of it. Satellite reception requires a dish, the broadcasting transmitters are now privatised and need to make a profit, there is a new layer of multiplex management, reception through existing sets requires set-top boxes and so on. And this puts on one side the interests of producers of the programmes or course materials and the providers of telecoms. All this adds to the cost of access to the new services and thus limits their audience reach.

Most important is that a specialist `learning channel’ will be broadcast `free to air’ as BBC Learning will be. Though initially to be transmitted on a commercial satellite, it is planned to be transmitted on all digital delivery platforms and will be broadcast ‘free to air’.

12 Changing support for learners, learning and its provision

Technology is not just going to change the teaching and learning process, but the way the whole system is provided and administered, and the way learning support is offered.

Technology can help the administration of the learning process :

Technology can assist access and offer more choice :

Technology can enhance the effectiveness of the learning experience :

Technology can assist in providing learner support :