The university of the future will look very different - even in five years' time, Sue Gregory, interim head of the UNE School of Education, believes.
Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) - from Microsoft and Google, smartphones and webinars, to augmented and virtual reality - will change how students learn and academics teach.
At UNE this week, Australian and New Zealand experts taught how to use TEL and educational technologies.
The university hosted the three-day Spring into Excellence Research School, run by ASCILITE (Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education), which aims to enhance learning and teaching through the pedagogical use of technologies..
Participants might be trained in scientific or health research, but not necessarily in TEL, ASCILITE vice-president Dr Chris Campbell, Griffith University, explained.
This was the first time UNE hosted the research school, now in its third year.
Participants might want to engage and retain at-risk students; help non-native English-speaking students adjust to the new culture; or better teach accounting, chemistry, or statistics to their students.
Technology-enhanced learning is particularly important for an institution like UNE, where nearly 80 per cent of its students are online.
"We don't just give them a PDF or a Word document to read," Professor Gregory said. "We have to use interactive tools."
Her focus is virtual worlds, which can use all senses, even taste and smell.
"Whatever you can get in face-to-face learning, we can replicate in virtual reality," Professor Gregory said.
Learners can visit the Sistine Chapel and see Michelangelo's painted ceiling; explore the moon and other strange new worlds, and talk to NASA astronauts; or travel back in time to the Mesozoic - without the risk of being lunch for a T Rex. Medical students can see an operation go wrong - without anyone being hurt.
"It is amazing what modern technology can do," Professor Gregory said. "Always someone will say: 'What do you think university will look like in five years time?' I have no idea! Back in the '90s, I said something like: 'That's the internet; I know everything.' So wrong, and now I know I will never know the tiniest portion of it, because it's moving at such a rapid pace! It's inspiring, and the future is going to be very different."
The networking and cross-disciplinary and cross-university collaboration at an event like the research school, Professor Gregory said, is fantastic for careers.
Participants learnt how to more successfully apply for grant funding, or submit journal articles. (One facilitator edits the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology.)
At last year's Spring into Excellence, for instance, academics from aviation and psychology, who wouldn't normally meet, networked and successfully applied for an internal grant; while education and health researchers ended up co-writing a book chapter on how to use virtual reality in their fields.
UNE has been an institutional member of ASCILITE for a long time; several members will attend the organisation's annual conference in Singapore in December.