M.F. Ramalhoto
Technical University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico
This paper links flexible and distance learning to R&D and innovation activities. It also scans worldwide the field of flexible and distance learning in advanced engineering and management education and training. The main reference source is part one of the EJEE, number. 2, volume 20, 1995. The last section of the paper presents a further discussion based on current research developments in information technology.
The higher education system plays a unique role in society. It is entrusted with responsibility for the long-term accumulation of knowledge and for conveying knowledge as the basis of lifelong learning and occupational activity. Up now, its main tasks have been undergraduate / postgraduate education and independent research. Many view advanced continuing engineering and management education as another dimension of higher education which rapidly bridges knowledge-creation / use-of-knowledge, with its integration into course content for the professional. It is a promising vehicle to communicate research achievements to society and for society to communicate its needs to academics. Clearly a proper implementation of this new dimension of higher education is of paramount importance for the nations technological development and for the future social appreciation of academics, and their research activities. However, the ideal formula of doing so is still far from being discovered.
Nevertheless, there are some promising roads to follow: (a) Information technology is a hot topic nowadays, with its cyber-superhighways, its merging of television networks and software/hardware computer and others telecommunication industries; that, hopefully, will lead to cheaper and much more powerful products in the near future. (b) From the research laboratories comes a new technology called - virtual reality - that enables the user to enter computer-generated worlds and interface with them three-dimensionally through sight, sound and touch, essentially, we are talking about learning-by-doing. As it is well known, the more senses involved during the training experience, the more effective is the learning. Virtual-reality offers the potential to improve further the effectiveness of multimedia and computer-based training tools. This technology can be used to recreate virtual environments of almost any kind, for example, laboratories. That, hopefully, will initiate the, so called, 3rd generation of distance learning of science and technology. In fact, its teaching potentialities might be enormously for education and training at all levels. At the higher education level, an interesting step beyond traditional methods, which strongly uses information technology, is the "business navigator's method”, developed by Angehrn et al.[1993]. That provides a more intensive learning experience than traditional management education methods. This method can be extended to many other areas, such as technology, engineering, environmental sciences and behavioral sciences education.
Personal interaction between the student and the teacher and among students themselves is necessary at a deeper learning level. Nowadays, through the power of telematics, which is getting cheaper all the time, that interaction can also take place when the teacher and the student are not in the same place. On the other hand, local study centers can allow the students to get together and organize occasional meetings with the teacher (whenever they feel the need to discuss the harder parts of the course), as well as, to fulfill the social function of the traditional higher education institutions. However, one of the biggest drawbacks of teaching science and technology at a distance, has always been the necessity of performing experiments at the laboratories and its difficulties. The Open University in UK initiated the 2nd. generation of distance learning of science and technology, by introducing the kits. The correspondence schools were not at all appropriated for teaching science and technology. They could not recreate the laboratories, by any means.
It is the author believe that, information technology and its new and future developments will provide some of the most relevant tools to successful advanced continuing education programs worldwide. That will allow a much faster transfer of relevant recent research results from academia to the manufacturing and service industries and governmental and social institutions, in order to speed up a sustainable technological development and the creation of a true learning society, all over the world. In fact, the importance of flexible and distance learning in research and technological development, has already been publicly recognized in many countries, for some years now. The European Union have been paying quite a lot of attention to it, see Rodriguez-Roselló [1995]. The 2nd European Forum for Continuing Engineering Education International Cooperation between Industry and Academia, Lisbon, 1992, had also addressed those issues, as it is reported in its Proceedings, Ramalhoto [1993]. Due to that, the following special issue of the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE), was published.
The 1st part of the European Journal of Engineering Education, volume 20, number 2, pp. 139-253, 1995, deals with Flexible and Distance Learning and Engineering Education, Ramalhoto [1995]. The main objective of this issue is to scan worldwide the field of distance learning, with special emphasis on all levels of engineering and management, namely, continuing education, research, postgraduate, undergraduate and vocational training.
Telematics for Education and Training in the European Union: Experiences from Research, by Luis Rodriguez-Roselló (Head of Division, European Commission, DG X III C-3); Distance Education from 1 to 26 000 Miles, by John P. Klus (Former-President, International Association for Continuing Engineering Education, IACEE); The National Technological University: Sharing Premier Educational Resources via Telecommunications, by Lionel V. Baldwin (President, National Technological University, NTU) and Gearold R. Johnson (Academic Vice-President, NTU); East-West Distance Education Project: Russian Experience, by Yuri A. Bocharov (President, Association of Continuing Engineering Education in the CIS); Promoting Clean Technology Through the Use of Multimedia Learning Material in Environmental Engineering, by A. Badran (Assistant Director-General for Science, UNESCO); Open Learning: Beyond the Institutional Approach, by Bernard Blandin (Senior Consultant of CESI ); Quality Assurance Issues in European Distance Education, by Erling Ljoså (President; European Distance Education Network, EDEN); Engineering Studies at the Open University, by D. I. Crecraft (Reader, Faculty of Technology at the Open University, UK); The Diploma in Information Technology with Distance Teaching Methods, by Francesco Lata (General-Director, Italian Consortium for Distance Learning, CUD) and Enrichetta Librandi (Researcher, CUD, Research Center in Rome); Planning for Flexible and Distance Learning in Engineering: Indian Experience, by V. C. Kulandaiswamy (Rector, Indira Gandhi National Open University) and Vijay V. Mandke (Director, School of Engineering and Technology, Indira Gandhi National Open University); Distance Education in Africa, by Naran Kala (Vice-President, International Council for Distance Education, ICDE); Distance Education in Australia, by Terry Evans (Head, Graduate School of Education, Deakin University); The International Council for Distance Education, by Marian Croft (Executive Director, ICDE); The British Columbia Open Learning Agency, by Ian Mugridge (Vice-President, Open Learning Agency); EDEN A Growing Garden, by Erling Ljoså (President, EDEN) and Kerry Mann (Executive Secretary, EDEN); The Standard Instructional Television Network: A Partnership with Industry, by Andy DiPaolo (Associated Dean, School of Engineering, Stanford University and Director, Stanford Instructional Television Network); A Selected Complementary Information List of Flexible and Distance Learning Institutions Worldwide, by M. F. Ramalhoto (Former Vice-Rector, "Universidade Aberta”, the Portuguese Open University, and Full Professor, 'Instituto Superior Técnico').
For historical reasons it is, perhaps, useful to give the following list of chronological data of the foundation of some of the most interesting Distance Learning Institutions worldwide.
| Africa | ||
| *1946 | The University of South Africa (UNISA) provides its first higher education distance teaching courses (For recent developments readers are referred to Kala [1995]). | |
| Asia | ||
| *1974 | Foundation of the ALLAMA IGBAL Open University, Pakistan. | |
| *1978 | Foundation of the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand. | |
| *1978 | Foundation of the National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan. | |
| *1983 | Foundation of the University of the Air, Japan. | |
| *1982 | Foundation of the Open University, India. | |
| *1985 | Foundation of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, India. (For recent developments in flexible and distance learning in engineering, readers are referred to Kulandaiswamy and Mandke [1995].) | |
| Australia | ||
| 1909 | First Corresponding School, State of Victoria. (For recent developments readers are referred to Evans [1995].) | |
| *1977 | Foundation of Deakin University. (For recent developments readers are referred to Evans [1995].) | |
| Europe | ||
| *1989 | EUROSTEP, Austria. (Now in Holland) | |
| *1988 | DELTA European Union Program for Flexible and Distance Learning, Belgium. (For recent developments readers are referred to Rodriguez-Roselló [1995].) | |
| *1987 | EuroPACE, Belgium. | |
| 1993 | EuroPACE 2000, Belgium. (It replaced EuroPACE.) | |
| *1840 | Foundation of the Establishment of the First Correspondence School in Europe, the Sir Isaac Pitman Correspondence College, UK. | |
| *1969 | Foundation of the Open University, UK. (For recent developments in flexible and distance learning in engineering, readers are referred to Crecraft [1995].) | |
| Israel | ||
| *1974 | Foundation of Everyman's University. | |
| Latin America | ||
| *1977 | Foundation of the "Universidad Estatal a Distancia”, Costa Rica. | |
| *1977 | Foundation of the "Universidad Nacional Abierta”, Venezuela. | |
| North America | ||
| *1974 | Canadian Association for Distance Education, Canada. | |
| 1988 | British Columbia Open Learning Agency, Canada. (For recent developments readers are referred to Mugridge [1995].) | |
| 1969 | ARPANET, USA Ministry of Defense. | |
| 1973 | INTERNET, USA. (Arpanet gave birth to Internet.) | |
| 1985 | National Technological University, USA. (For recent developments readers are referred to Baldwin and Johnson [1995].) | |
| International | ||
| *1938 | Foundation of the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE). | |
| *1982 | ICCE changes its name to become the International Council for Distance Education. (For recent developments readers are referred to Croft [1995]). |
Ramalhoto [1995] gives the addresses of 17 Open Higher Education Institutions in Western Europe. Most of the material presented in sections 1 and 2 is in Ramalhoto [1996].
(The dates with * were taken from: Rocha Trindade [1992].)
Digital technology has made it possible to convert words, sounds, pictures and moving images into coded digital messages which can be combined, stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly, efficiently, and in large volumes without loss of quality. As a result, electronic commerce and the multimedia revolution are driving the computing and telecoms worlds into ever-closer contact. Meanwhile, a wave of privatization and liberalization is reshaping the competitive environment for telecommunications services around the world.
On the other hand, cable modems, hybrid fibre/coaxial systems and ADSL, which uses traditional twisted-pair telephone wires, offer the prospect of almost unlimited bandwidth to the home. Today, the PC can be used as a telephone, a fax, an answering machine and television, a node of the office network or a gateway to commercial on-line information services and the Internet. In business, the PC offers an available, highly affordable, and scaleable tool.
For some, the Internet can serve a critical role in allowing companies to establish and maintain relationships with their clients, which in turn allows them to become more responsive to clients and to promote sales of additional products and services. Of course, the risky problems linked to security are large and very far from being solved.
Clearly, the initial concept of Information Technology, IT (computation and data manipulation) has been changing a lot during these last 20 years. For some, IT has even been replaced by Relational Technology, R-Tech. This concept was recently born in Europe. Its parents are Albert Bressand and Catherine Distler, the authors of the book "La Planète Relationelle”. For those authors, the new technologies exist to manage the relations among people, enterprises and nations; therefore, the key word now is relationship. Moreover, for George Gilder (one of the big brothers of the NET) the Internet is the computer at a planetary scale and for Nicholas Negroponte (the father of multimedia and Director of the MIT - Media Lab) that is where the biggest business is.
With the electronic networks and namely the explosion of the Internet, as well as the multimedia and artificial intelligence recent developments at the MIT - Media Lab and in other places, it is clear that the second informational revolutions is now with us. In the context of continuing education and research and development, all of it seems to lead to conclude that teleworking and telestuding are being turned into a real possibility for a growing segment of the workforce. On the other hand, at least in Europe, to face the unemployment crises trade unions and governments are encouraging a substantial reduction in the number of working hours. That also might encourage the workforce to enroll in adequate tailor-made engineering/management telestudies.
It might be of some interest to quote here the recommendations of Panel 16 Engineering and Management, of the World Congress of Engineering Educators and Industry Leaders, UNESCO, Paris, July 2-5, 1996:
Perhaps, I should mention that:-national and international high-quality/low cost university public education, is believed by many, as one of the promising ways of creating centerposts of democracy and fairness. Are we going to achieve it through information technology in the next two decades? I wonder...
M. F. Ramalhoto is a Ph.D. from University College London. She is a Professor of Applied Probability and Statistics at "Instituto Superior Técnico” and former Vice-Rector of "Universidade Aberta”. Her research interests are on: Queues, Reliability, Quality Control and TQM. She has been active in developing methodologies to set up policies to link Higher Education to R&D and Innovation. She was a member of the SEFI Administrative Council (1988-1994) and External Assessor for the British Open University.