ASET-HERDSA 2000: Flew - public broadcasting, digital media and lifelong learning in the knowledge economy

[ Abstracts ] [ Program ] [ Proceedings ] [ ASET-HERDSA 2000 Main ]

Educational media in transition: Public broadcasting, digital media and lifelong learning in the knowledge economy

Terry Flew
Director, Centre for Media Policy and Practice
School of Media and Journalism, Queensland University of Technology

Robert T. Coonrod, President and CEO of the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1998.

This paper will undertake a comparative study of developments in the use of digital media technologies for educational purposes, with a particular focus upon the renewed concentration of public broadcasters upon post secondary educational programming in order to tap into the lifelong learning market, and the new skills and training requirements of individuals and corporations in the emergent 'knowledge economy.' The paper will outline factors behind the decline of the open learning model for low cost mass delivery of post secondary education using broadcast media, and consider the possibilities for using digital media, and the convergence of broadcast, print based and online resources, for cost effective, equitable, and wide scale delivery of quality educational content. It links these developments to three interrelated developments:

The need for public broadcasters to reinvent themselves and their role in a multi-channel, digital broadcasting environment, where they require a mix of public and private funds to operate, and where public funding is increasingly tied to particular programs and projects rather than the organisation as a whole. The argument of this paper will be that they have been doing so, perhaps paradoxically, by re-emphasising core elements of their public broadcasting mission, such as the provision of educational material;
The need to develop off campus, flexibly delivered educational content to meet the needs of adult and lifelong learners in a 'knowledge economy' characterised by the need to continuous skills upgrading and retraining and the reduced 'half life' of knowledge that can be applied in workplace and organisational contexts;
The need for governments and higher education providers to develop cost effective modes of content delivery in order to maximise community opportunities for lifelong learning. The development of educational content using converged digital media can assist in meeting these objectives by allowing for: reduced costs of producing new materials and updating existing materials; ability to access content from a wider range of sources; provision of quality materials with interactive elements; and the ability to develop 'layered' content from broad appeal, freely available programming to specialised course modules that are linked to accredited courses and only available on a fee paying basis.

The paper would undertake an overview of developments in six countries: the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR. It would consider private as well as public broadcasting initiatives in the area of post secondary education, although the focus will be upon the latter.

The study draws upon work undertaken by the author for the Australian Government researching the impact of new media on the 'borderless' delivery of post secondary education, and the emergence of 'corporate universities' and new topes of for profit education providers, as well as work undertaken with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation looking at the future of educational programming in the ABC as it is 'going digital' in the early 2000s.

Contact person: Terry Flew. Email: t.flew@qut.edu.au
Voice: +61 (0)7 3864 2276 Fax: +61 (0)7 3864 1810

Please cite as: Flew, T. (2000). Educational media in transition: Public broadcasting, digital media and lifelong learning in the knowledge economy. In Flexible Learning for a Flexible Society, Proceedings of ASET-HERDSA 2000 Conference. Toowoomba, Qld, 2-5 July. ASET and HERDSA. http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/aset-herdsa2000/abstracts/flew-abs.html

[ Abstracts ] [ Program ] [ Proceedings ] [ ASET-HERDSA 2000 Main ]
Created 16 June 2000. Last revised: 23 June 2000. HTML: Roger Atkinson [atkinson@cleo.murdoch.edu.au]
This URL: http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/aset-herdsa2000/abstracts/flew-abs.html