A
U
S
T
R
A
L
I
A
N
U
N
I
This section also raises the question of the ‘real’ value of a PhD, as Sonja Engelage and Andreas Hadjar use a Swiss survey to model the benefits of the academy for those contemplating a doctoral candidature. Gary Peters argues the case for the Arts, where an absence of knowledge is often more useful to one’s study than is an abundance of it, courtesy of today’s knowledge economy. Interrogating the mission of today’s university, Rita Fornari looks at the shift of higher education’s original place in society, to its more problematised contemporary location. Sonja Petkovska also examines the role of the university, though her argument is based on the grand narrative of the institution as she follows Jean-Francois Lyotard and asks why do our higher education institutes remain so unchanging? Part III (Technological Frontiers of Higher education) takes the reader where, in 2008, no man had gone before, into the interfacing realms of technology and the classroom. Bill Tait makes a sound point in suggesting that it is no longer sufficient for an academic to be fluent in their own discipline, as it is now essential to have both technology and digital pedagogical methodologies in the briefcase as well. More than three years after this paper was presented, many academics and teachers would no doubt be nodding vigorously at this
126
Carpe Diem, Review by Patricia Kerslake
V
E
R
S
I
T
I
E
S
’
R
E
V
I
E
W
observation, but out of hindsight, as professional development and ongoing learning needs of educators in today’s universities loom large around the globe, especially since many students demonstrate themselves to be far more tech-savvy than their teachers. Johnnes Arreymbi and Chrisina Draganova look towards the incorporation of mobile phone technology in learning and teaching and wonder if this is a desirable marriage, or simply another attempt to maintain engagement with the Gen-Y student. Looking specifically at classroom interaction, the paper offers a possible model to facilitate new technology into existing learning structures. Had this text been published closer to the time of these discussions, its value would be unquestioned, and, as an historical marker, the book still offers the researcher a point of beginning, a place where such discussions had not yet been overtaken by the realtime application of theory. Reading this publication today, there is a strange feeling of déjà vu but little sense of provocative debate. Patricia Kerslake in an Adjunct Research Fellow of CQUniversity’s Learning and Teaching Research Education Centre and a Senior Lecturer at CQU’s Melbourne Campus.
vol. 53, no. 2, 2011