Stephen Downes is a senior research officer with the National Research Council of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Downes works with the E-Learning Research Group, which is affiliated with the Council’s Institute for Information Technology. Downes is the author of the Online Learning Daily e-mail newsletter and his Web site, "Stephen’s Web." He is a "tell-it-like-it-is" kind of guy. As noted on his Web site, his commentaries about online learning are not unbiased and value-neutral. He assesses what is happening in the field and voices his opinion.

Downes refers to his work as "free-ranging." He explains that he is often literally immersed in today’s new technologies. "I live and breathe the Web. What that does is give me a feel for what the Web is, what the Web does, what people are like when they are on the Web, what the potential is, and what the pitfalls are." He combines this work with his philosophy, which is clearly stated at the bottom of his home page as follows:

"I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumbrance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle. Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be. This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward."

Following, in an abbreviated form, are pieces of a recent conversation EdPath had with Downes:

EdPath: What are some of the resources you point people to on your Web site and in your e-mail newsletter?

Downes: There are different types of resources I refer people to - one type is the typical academic journal, and those are useful, and gradually those are becoming more and more open access. I think once they become completely open access, it will add a lot. . . I refer people to news articles so they know what is happening on a day to day basis - the business of education, the law of education, copyright, etc. I link them to Blogs. Blogs are the voice of the community. There are hundreds of people who are working in the field and recording their observations, not in the commercial press or in any journals, but on their Blogs.

The research reports and discussions and dialogues that are taking place in Blogs is as good as anything else I’ve seen out there, and people should look at it. Of course, it is hard to find them if you don’t read the newsletter. I know where it all is. I have set up systems. I don’t really go prancing about the Web a whole lot. I’ve set things up so that the stuff that I am looking for comes to me. I look at it and filter it.

EdPath: Where do you think higher education is heading in relation to the adoption of sophisticated education technologies.

Downes: Well the crisis is rapidly approaching. It depends on your time frame. It’s hard, because we don’t have a finished product yet. The really long term is for knowledge and information to begin to flow like commodities, the way your water does, the way your electricity does - where they are simply available when they are needed. Then education takes on a different shape. We don’t have the little wall socket we can plug into to get learning whenever we need it. We will. But until we have something that is as easy to use as a wall socket or a light switch, or a water tap, then you have to talk about circuit boards and plumbing and all that complicated stuff, and it is hard to justify, it is hard to explain the investment that it takes, especially when the interface is still at a complicated level. . . With online learning you need special tools, you need special attachments, you have special rooms, such as computer labs and so on. We need to think of learning as being imbedded inside our everyday devices, so that we don’t need this complicated interface. It is just there. When you want it, you just turn it on.

EdPath: And what will happen to teachers and classrooms?

Downes: It does not make the teacher disappear, it does not make the mentor disappear. We will probably evolve from a classroom system, to a system of more individualized counseling and coaching and instruction. It is already beginning to happen. It happens because our teachers, coaches, and mentors now have much more capacity at their fingertips. They don’t need to spend 90 percent of their day being information broadcasters. The environment does that for them. So now they are able to be much more effective on a one-to-one basis. So, of course, our courses and classes will disaggregate - but all of that will not happen until the technology gets integrated into other things.

So I’m not really interested in online courses per se - these are tools doing the old thing, and they do it about as well as the old thing. The results are as much as the old thing. There is an awful lot of work involved to get a significant difference. So I’m looking further into the new thing, and the new thing is education as a commodity, whenever and wherever you need. Then a lot of the objections to online learning will disappear.

www.downes.ca