Space Place and the Virtual University

Project Leader: James Cornford
Sponsors: ESRC

Significant transformations are occurring in the nature and role of the university. It is possible to point to three important and related developments: the transition from elite to mass higher education; changes in the production of knowledge; and developments in information and communications technologies (ICTs). Taken together, these changes have been seen as resulting in a major transformation in the role of the university, perhaps even its reinvention. One attempt to capture and channel these changes has been the idea of the virtual university and it is this idea that provides the focus for the research. To understand the relevance of this term, the project will explore the way in which technological initiatives within the university relate to the wider network of the university, including such factors as governance and management, administration, teaching and learning, research, and links to the community and business. The research is essentially qualitative, concentrated on a small number of Higher Education Institutions in the North East of England, and will contribute to understanding the changes in the organisation and processes of higher education associated with the introduction of the new ICTs.

Project Publications Include:

Cornford, J and Pollock, N (2003), Putting the University Online: Information, Technology, Organisation. Buckingham: Open University Press. [WebLink]
Pollock, N and Cornford, J (2002), 'The theory and Practice of the Virtual University: Working Through the Work of Making Work Mobile', Minerva, 40: 359-373.
Cornford, J and Pollock, N (2002), 'The university campus as resourceful constraint: process and practice in the construction of the virtual university', pp. 170-181 in Lea, M and Nicholl, K (eds.) Distributed Learning: Social and Cultural Approches to Practice. London: Routledge/Falmer.
Cornford, J (2001), 'The virtual university is... the university made concrete?', pp. 301-317 in Dutton, W H and Loader, B (eds.) Digital Academe: The New Media and Institutions of Higher Education and Learning. London: Taylor and Francis.