Technological Convergence in Higher Education:
Are the Educators Ready?

KEY WORDS:

Education, strategic alliances, technological convergence, communications, world wide web, internet, hypermedia, interactive, diffusion of innovation.

ABSTRACT:

As higher education institutions, worldwide, hasten to adapt their organisational structures and operating procedures and form alliance networks with each other and clients, they seek to increase their sphere of influence locally and globally through the use of new technologies. Technological convergence reported by many commentators, particularly electronic networking that facilitates communications and distribution of educational materials, continues to have an impact. In the space of less than a decade there has been a paradigm shift away from labour-intensive, face-to-face and paper-based delivery to newer electronic systems, notably the World Wide Web (WWW), that promise to replace personal contact with interactivity in another form.

Does the timing of instructor adoption of converging information technology and communications technologies explain variance in stated intentions to recommend adoption of new technologies in higher education? Will there occur recommendations for adoption of technologies such as CD-ROM / CD-I by students? Will there be universal instructor adoption of the Internet in higher education course delivery and research?

The paper reports on more recent changes in the technological environment and examines not the willingness of the institutions to adopt such technologies, but rather the readiness of higher education instructors, as influencers and content providers, to utilise these technologies. The paper is a 'working paper' that uses survey data gained from the first phase of a longitudinal study into diffusion of technological innovation in the Australian higher education sector. It also draws on studies concerning the commercial 'marketspace,' particularly recent papers concerned with interactive technologies, including the Internet.