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Digital Delivery of Resources in the Developing World

March 12, 2012 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Purchased from iStockphoto

Whilst universities in the UK consider how to survive in “the current economic climate”, digital technology and Open Educational Resources is making a huge contribution to the developing world:

Widening access to higher education is one of the great global challenges of the 21st century. Higher education is the key to creating the educated and skilled workforces that developing countries need to grow their economies and to ensure a better life for their citizens, but existing higher education systems and institutions effectively exclude large numbers of the world’s population.

Given the scale of the demand, it is not logistically or economically feasible to build and staff enough traditional bricks-and-mortar universities to bring one within the reach of every aspiring student in the developing world. So we need to make a radical shift and move away from the current model of higher education, which we have inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries, and towards new systems that reap the benefits of 21st-century technologies.

To get an idea of what the future could be like, we can look at what is already happening. In Africa today, a revolutionary programme called Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (Tessa) has been made possible by the internet. Operated by a consortium of national and international educators, at its core is a bank of teacher education resources, created by a team of specialists and made available online as open educational resources that support teacher learning in the classroom. Tessa has reached more than 400,000 primary school teachers in nine African countries since 2005.

Read the full story.

Filed Under Times Higher Education Tagged With OER, Online Learning, Social Action

‘Invest £100m’ to seize cyber-market

January 27, 2011 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Put resources into international online learning, task force recommends. Rebecca Attwood reports

Universities should seize the rapidly growing international market in online learning, but doing so will require investment, a panel of experts has said.

The final report from the government’s Online Learning Task Force, which includes experts from Microsoft, Apple and Pearson, calls for an injection of £100 million over five years to expand the UK’s online provision and boost its brand.

It warns that private providers are moving into the international online market “quickly and aggressively”.

Meanwhile, the growing use of IT in schools is changing students’ expectations of the technology that will be available at university, and the introduction of higher tuition fees could open up a new domestic market as more students consider studying online.

“The higher education sector has been talking about the potential of online learning for well over 10 years. The moment has come if we wish to remain and grow as a major international player in higher education,” says Dame Lynne Brindley, chair of the task force and head of the British Library, in the introduction to the report, Collaborate to Compete: Seizing the Opportunity of Online Learning for UK Higher Education.

Read full story.

Filed Under Times Higher Education Tagged With Distance Learning, Online Learning

Digital ‘deviants’ and the spirit of ’68

November 18, 2010 By drbexl Leave a Comment

In May 1968 the old order was upturned by marginalised contract lecturers. Today, the proliferation of online courses offers slow-track academics a similar opportunity to seize the scholarly high ground, argues Paula Humfrey

In the history of the 1960s, mai ’68 is now seen as a pancultural turning point. France’s événements de mai started with a small, contained protest against the administration of the university of Paris-X Nanterre, sparked by a significant increase in student numbers that necessitated hiring lecturers on contract. By the time the strikes and rioting reached the Sorbonne, campus protests had opened rifts beneath the established social and institutional order of French academic life.

Lately, comparisons of May 1968 to 21st-century life have been much in evidence, occasioned in part by the recent 40th anniversary of the unrest. It’s not just the date correspondence, though. It’s the connection between a spirit of academic rebellion then and an emergent sense of scholarly rebellion now.

Perhaps it is not incidental that we are approaching a revolutionary moment in online education – a field populated by contract lecturers – that smacks of the conditions Pierre Bourdieu outlined in his sociological analysis of the university crisis of May 1968 in France. The present position of online lecturers in the academy resonates with Bourdieu’s depiction of the lowly faculty hired on contract who revolted in solidarity with the students during les événements.

Read full story… goes onto to discuss some specifics of online teaching.

Filed Under Times Higher Education Tagged With Online Learning, Times Higher Education

Online Tuition “not second-rate”

July 29, 2010 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Dame Lynne Brindley aims to dispel myths and build on UK’s position. Rebecca Attwood writes

The idea that online learning is a “poor substitute” for campus provision is a myth, according to the head of the UK’s Online Learning Task Force.

In a time of hefty cuts to higher education, sceptics will argue that the government’s heightened interest in online learning is driven – at least in part – by a desire to cut costs.

But, in an interview with Times Higher Education, Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library and chair of the task force, said the best examples of online learning were “not cheap alternatives” and required “deep consideration”.

The task force is “trying to dispel some of the myths that online learning is a second-rate alternative”, she said.

Meeting the changing demands of students – whether they are studying on campus, at a distance or via a combination of the two – is one of the group’s priorities.

But there are financial, as well as pedagogical, objectives.

Filed Under Digital Literacy, Learning, Times Higher Education Tagged With Online Learning