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This article explores the perennial tension between the demands of management for quality projects that can be used to attract new markets and students and the traditional scholarly approach to learning. Universities are unique environments compared to industry settings. They are unique in that the responsibility for the quality of the teaching material rests with highly autonomous professionals. The feeling is that the application of traditional project management techniques with tight deadlines and the production of a product at the end does not fit scholarly activities requiring reflection and discourse. The costs of setting up new learning technologies and the skill sets required to generate quality materials are driving the need for more effective course development processes. This is forcing institutions to reassess how course development projects using new technology are undertaken. This paper discusses these issues and offers a model that aims to combine the effectiveness of project management techniques with the scholarly approach of action learning, based on research and the experience at RMIT University (Australia). (Contains 20 references.) (Author/MES)

This series of four articles outlines a pre-retirement planning seminar which was designed and presented to the Ministry of Education in Toronto, Canada. The first article identifies the participants and reasons for attending. The second article was designed to make policy makers and personnel administrators aware of these planning needs and to expose them to further considerations. The next article identifies steps to take before conducting the seminars and includes participant reading lists. The last article raises the question of necessity and justifies the need for pre-retirement seminars for employees. The articles stress the major role the employer has in insuring that all employees have opportunities to attend such programs. (BEF)