The classroom may not be a thing of the past but it could be heading for minority status in universities.

An academic and author said Tuesday higher education is quickly moving toward online learning despite universities and faculty that remain steeped in the past and don't use technology well.

Tony Bates, an educational consultant whose resume includes a stint as a research chair in e-learning in Spain and director of distance education at UBC, spoke to a conference on the digital future of higher education Tuesday at Thompson Rivers University.

Statistics from the United States show students are increasingly favouring online education, particularly those already enrolled in traditional face-to-face programs. Typically they are looking for flexibility or getting courses that are already full in classrooms.

In the next five to six years "more than 60 per cent will be taking distance (education.)

"They'll be the majority of students," Bates said.

The concept is particularly important at TRU, which was given control of B.C. Open Learning five years ago when it became a full-fledged university. But Bates warned against creating separate divisions.

"For TRU it's critical. Will you keep open learning separate or will you converge? That's the way the rest of the world is going — it's converging."

Bates said while university faculty often dismiss online learning as "second class," research has shown student outcomes are the same. At University of British Columbia, test results from online and traditional classes are the same.

Bates is authoring a book, along with a Spanish academic, on e-learning practices in 11 European and North American universities. He is critical of using technology, including clickers used by students rather than raising hands, or multiple screens in classrooms, for example.

"We're putting GPS and quadraphonic sound on a horse and cart."

He said most university administrators and faculty don't know how to revamp courses to include online learning and were never trained how to teach in the first place. Instead, as graduate students they specialized in research and are expected to know how to teach students and use e-learning without formal training.

Bates argued that universities must have e-learning divisions, with accompanying budgets, that work closely with instructors. And those instructors should look at revamping courses so they are a hybrid of personal instruction and online learning.

"There may not be three classes a week, but one class or maybe none. Just a meeting on campus once a week with the rest online."

Online learning or hybrid models are particularly useful for mature students, who are more motivated and have less time to spend on campus.

Bates said universities and faculty cling to an ideal image of teaching, which he illustrated with a drawing of Socrates beneath a Linden tree talking with six students. Several thousand years later that's transformed into an industrial scale of education with inefficiencies that include hours that are mostly 9 to 5 and exclude summer in many programs.

One of Bates's core recommendations is that PhD programs include nine months of training in teaching. Currently there is little or no training for teaching, despite the fact most academics will go on to be full-time university professors and teachers.