The Future of University Teaching: Bleak or Promising?

Abstract

In this essay I reflect on what university teaching might be like in the future. I first consider the context in which universities exist in the twenty-first century and identify some of the pressures for change that currently face them. These include the changing demographics among students, the calls by various stakeholders for increased access, quality and accountability, and the rapidly changing technological environment. I suggest that a dismal future would be one where university teaching fails to adapt to these changes and I then envisage a scenario in which many of the changes already begun through the SoTL movement take