Collaboration and the Successful Use of Information and Communications Technologies in Teaching and Learning Geography in Higher Education

Collaboration may help secure many of the benefits of, and overcome many of the obstacles to, the transformation of learning and teaching that is currently in prospect, arising partly from the pervasive effects of information and communications technologies. Benefits accrue from interactions and sharing between students and between staff, and in developing teaching resources, creating learning-resources databases, and delivering courses. International collaboration has additional dimensions: larger scale and diversity of activity; wider cross-cultural considerations; and international student programmes. Major collaborative innovations face four groups of issues: challenges to established institutional structures and practices; re-allocations of funding; adherence to agreed technical standards; and legal impediments. These are more complex at the international level at which the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education will operate.