Full Description
The university as we have known it is undergoing massive transformations. This observation is commonly made these days during discussions of the future of our academic system(s). While it certainly holds true for the "Western" strong holds of our globe, it likewise applies to a wide variety of marginalized contexts and locations beyond. For historical reasons, universities and academic systems differ considerably from place to place. However, the transformative process under analysis here is driven by major economic and technological develop ments generally subsumed under the label 'globalization'. And although, the contemporary world deliberately puts the stress on change and 'the new', the traditional academic systems are challenged by the great juggernaut of global ized transformation on the level of the particular and the local. In our view, the ongonig changes are neither reason for celebration nor de spair. What motivated us to put this volume together was our curiosity about these processes of change, as well as our awareness of their significance, our partisanship for particular directions that they mayor may not take and, last but not least, our insight into their complexities and heterogeneous, even contradic tory, outcomes.
Contents
I. Research and Knowledge in the Information Age: Selected Feminist Approaches.- Transnationalizing Tertiary Education in a Global Information Society.- Open and Virtual Universities.- Compromising Women: Teaching Composition Online and at a Distance in the United States.- The Material Foundation of Virtual Subjectivity.- ICT-Representations as Transformative Critical Rooms.- II. The vifu Project: Inside and Outside Assessments.- Driven by User-Orientation, Participation and Interaction: vifu — Virtual Women's University (www.vifu.de).- Computer Training at vifu: Digging Out Curiosity.- Lessons to be Learned from the Project and Process of Supported E-Learning at the Virtual Women's University.- Intelligent Online Knowledge Resources for Instructional Learning. Computer-Supported and Computer-Aided Design for Online Knowledge Resources.- The Users' vifu.- Information Architecture and Networks at vife — Continuation of the Project in 2002.- The Hype and the Morning After — What We Have Learned about E-Learning.- III. From Traditional University to Networks of Shared Knowledge and Learning.- Women on the Net: the Internet as a Tool for Social Transformation.- How ICT Plays a Role in Social Movement — The Case of Africa.- Productive Differences — Virtual Networks Call For Heterogeneity.- Authors.
