The Academic Commons blog is running a story about a collaborative project in brainstorming what a university could look like in a digital age. From the blog article:

The folks at the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory aka HASTAChttp://hastac.org) have posted a draft of a paper entitled “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.” The paper will evolve through online collaboration and conversations, and will be published in its final form as part of the Occasional Paper Series on Digital Media and Learning sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

It is framed by the following proposition: “We are faced today by a pressing question: How do institutions–social, civic, educational–transform in response to and in order to promote new kinds of learning in the information age?”

This provocative and difficult question–What does a peer-to-peer learning institution look like and how does it differ from what we understand our traditional learning institutions to be?–is only part of what makes this project exciting.

This project looks as if it is bringing together a number of cutting edge players, so it is well worth visiting the blog and the site for the paper. It should certainly stimulate discussion about what a South African university could develop into. Given the diversity of our university communities and the very rapid rate of transformation we face, this kind of forward thinking could offer us a lot.