Education necessarily reflects the technology and media of the culture that surrounds it. It may, of course, go the other way. Students tired of canned culture may relish real-time, demanding lectures which leave them with questions and with work to do Which ever way it goes, the introduction of computer technology needs to be carefully monitored. The realpolitik of university funding means that it will be seen, correctly, as the means for financial savings in the long run. These, however, may prove to be an economy too far.
Computer technology is also the ideal vehicle for further destructive commodification of education.
Once systems are in place that were designed to do one thing, they become the means to do other things. Schools and universities are already labouring under a variety of bureaucratic horrors such as research selectivity exercises, unrealistic comparisons of courses, performance related pay, bogus exercises in estimating teaching quality and so on. Once computer based teaching becomes the norm, the scope for such inappropriate practices is multiplied. Teaching support is one thing, teachin itself is another. It needs to remain person to person.