Superstar professor - the future of e-learning?

Today's celebrities tend to come from the worlds of entertainment and sport but if online e-learning evolves in the way some IT companies are hoping then professors may well become the rock 'n' roll stars of the future. The idea is that traditional, classroom-based teachers are replaced by online education gurus. Instead of impressing potential employers with a Harvard MBA, one day the ambitious may well be graduating with a degree from a world-renowned professor.

Sun Microsystems, for one, argues the present teacher in front of a class model isn't scalable and is thus very expensive, especially at Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). The new model would see students become customers of education, able to attend school whenever it suits them, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For Kim Jones, vice president of global education and research at Sun, evolving technology means e-learning will be accessible and available "anywhere, anytime, any place on any thing".

Instead of attending primary, then secondary and finally tertiary education between the ages of five and 25, online education will provide learning for life. Jones says the future may well be a matter of "registering online rather than in line".

The spin from Sun is all about a network computing model that takes advantage of internet technologies and products for the 'benefit of education'. The reality is Sun can see the potential to make loads of cash.

But there are many obstacles to overcome, such as the ethos of education traditionally not being about profiteering. For example, it has only been in the recent past that many governments have stopped fully funding students' tertiary educations and created an environment where institutions must compete for funds. And some aren't happy with having to grow, fearing size will damage their reputation.

Russell Altendorff, director of the information systems division at the London Business School, said: "Institutions such as ours aren't about mass production. Are we saying we should be able to scale up to become ubiquitous?"

Also, to make anywhere and anytime education a reality, bandwidth must be improved. With increased use of video streaming and online lecturing by guru professors, education will be bandwidth-hungry.

This then ties in with another important issue: e-learning leading to a loss of human interaction. For many students, attending university is an environment to develop social skills. Many attend for the sex factor (I know) which admittedly at times proves detrimental to traditional forms of learning but very beneficial to other forms of life education.

When questioned about the practicality of e-learning teaching pupils the skills to get up to industry speed as quickly as possible, Professor Philip Treleaven from the computer science department at University College London said there has always been a trade off. He said there is more pressure than ever to teach students how to use practical tools like Microsoft applications but he believes history proves teaching "computer science" rather "computing" means: "You're actually putting them in a better position for the rest of their lives."

However, e-learning certainly already has legs and the UK government for one has acknowledged this by supporting initiatives such as the University for Industry (UFI). This public-private partnership is part of the government's utopian plan to create a society where everyone from any background can learn and upgrade their skills, throughout life. The government is also prioritising greater bandwidth at colleges.

'Just in time' learning is proving a very popular form of e-learning for people right across the globe - whether for managers wanting to brush up before briefing their staff on certain business developments or an online Microsoft Word tutorial for PAs who want to brush up on their document merging.

This type of e-learning is thriving and perhaps this is where online education will continue to prosper. With HEIs employers get quality assurance. They know that graduates from these courses should be the cream of the crop.

Whether or not e-learning flourishes in the way Sun is speculating or acts merely as an alternative depends on these institutions manipulating their strong brands and changing their current structures to follow a more business-like model. However, by doing this they may jeopardise their exclusiveness, which essentially is part of what gives them their elite reputation.

It looks like the internet will benefit education, yet some doubt whether HEIs are prepared to have their brands diluted for profit and play second fiddle to maverick rock 'n' roll professors.