This paper proposes a staged adoption of technologies to move a university toward the “virtual,” and also proposes that we should focus more on the benefits of e-learning for students, rather than concentrate effort on asking staff to produce hypertext. The form of virtual university proposed here also emphasizes the need for a centrally supported learning management system (LMS). The author understands the need for academic teaching autonomy, and the constant revisiting of course design, but falls into the trap of rational reuse and systematic processes for computer-based education.

A variety of techniques are discussed to help the move toward the virtual in a university setting: recording lectures, using Web-based systems to assess and communicate materials, and Internet-based seminars. To record lectures, a basic form of laptop and microphone is proposed. The use of a whiteboard is suggested, as a low-cost form of capturing a lecture. Another method suggested is the use of a portable speaker’s desk, with a pencil-sensitive tablet. Kandzia also mentions the use of proprietary video recording, but does not say how enthusiastically staff would welcome such a process. For Internet-based seminars, he makes the interesting claim that the quality of the videoconference can be lower than that of a lecture (but provides no references to support this proposition). He notes that the workload increases for both tutors and students when using Web-based materials, but claims, with no evidence, that everyone likes online learning.

This anecdotal view of e-learning is typical of much of the earlier literature on computer-aided learning. It is of limited interest. First, the author only considers the German situation; second, he reviews possible e-learning technologies in a superficial way; and, third, the bibliography is very brief, though the uniform resource locators (URLs) of a number of product Web sites are included as footnotes. The adoption of an LMS is proposed as if it were a simple and easy matter to combine university administration processes and systems with learning materials. A recent review of the adoption of “managed learning environments” (the UK-equivalent of the LMS) in UK higher education offers a more balanced view of the workload required for the proposed central integration of systems. This form of the virtual university is widely regarded as a costly project, which will not be achieved within the next four years [1].