Introduction

Abstract

Massification, marked orientation, standardisation and digitalisation are some of the reform elements in higher education that may potentially affect the development of the individual student in a negative way. For us this has caused a concern for student development and learning in net-based education. This book is the result of two years of work in a Scandinavian research group with a common interest in net-based higher education. We started out with a sense of there being something different in the Scandinavian way of conducting net-based higher education, and at the same time with a concern for the developmental processes of the net-based students towards being citizens of academia. If we look at the possible trajectory of a student who conducts all her higher education studies net-based, from the introductory course up to the level of PhD; in the present versions of our net-based educational courses and programmes, what do we believe would be the outcome? Will the student have developed her own voice as an academic? We fear that something would be lacking. There could of course potentially be a number of different dimensions lacking in any student development, regardless of learning environment. But, when it comes to our present net-based courses and programmes, our hypothetical assumption is that the Academic Bildung of the students would be suffering.