Virtual education in universities. An emerging organization in the Knowledge Society Jordy Micheli Sara Armendáriz Paper for the Policy Workshop: Informing.

Virtual education in universities. An emerging organization in the

Knowledge Society

Jordy MicheliJordy Micheli

Sara ArmendárizSara Armendáriz

Paper for the Policy Workshop: “Informing the Knowledge Society - Feeding SSH Research into Policy Design in Latin America and Europe”, organized by EULAKS, London, September 23-24, 2010

• This study is about emerging organizations within the

universities, oriented to implement an innovative process

increasingly pervasive into the knowledge society: the virtual

education.

• The document has preliminary results based on a

questionnaire applied to virtual education officials from 34

universities in some countries of Latin America

• Virtual education is the teaching-learning process that takes

place, partly or totally, through the Internet.

• There are two possibilities in this process: learning conducted

completely online as a substitute for learning with the

physical presence of the teacher, or learning entailing a

combination of physical presence and the Internet (blended

learning).

• VE is a set of practices based on different technologies within the ICTs; some place more emphasis on mass products and others focus on personal experience.

• The former are oriented towards the external markets of the university institution, either continuing education or graduate school. The latter rather look for internal spaces allowing a relation of greater experimentation and face-to-face contact with students.

• In both cases the challenge is to create virtual products: information contents and didactic sequences for learning and transformation into knowledge.

• The degree of virtualization of the contents and sequences may define the complexity of virtual education.

• In universities, there is an increasing presence of formal

structures, such as departments, sections, offices, whose

function is to develop virtual education systems

• VE System: information technology-based environments, in which the

learner s interaction with learning materials , instructors, and /or peers are

mediated through technology

• Virtual Education Structures: structures within the

organization of the university that are responsible for

managing and expanding the VE System.

• The structures created for the practice of virtual education are

(the ?) innovative nuclei of universities. They are responsible

for technological learning and its translation into

organizational learning, and using the skills acquired, they

must disseminate virtual education and insert it in the

practices and strategies of universities.

• These nuclei are in direct contact with dynamic practices of

the knowledge society:

• matching to the aspirations and ways of communication of

Internet native pupils

• mediators between the digital technology development

groups, which exert a great pressure on universities, and the

real needs of traditional teachers.

• Generating the reflective knowledge about virtual education.

A digital native performs: • Digital Natives aged 13 to 17 average 1,742 text messages a month

• 42 percent of teens say they can text while blindfolded

• 39 to 49 percent of 18- to 30-year-olds have sent text messages while

driving, and they slow their reaction time by 35 percent when doing

so

• 61 percent of teens who text prefer texting messages to friends

rather than talking

• 60 percent of 12- to 17-year-old Digital Natives don't think of texting

as "writing"

• VE Structures nowadays are generating a multitask service,

which requires a combination of professional expertise and a

constant learning process for the generation of knowledge.

The service generated has a wide scope(time, space and

people). Due to the nature of the processes of communication

and information handled by VE Structures they can acquire a

power much greater than their relative size and lack of

seniority in the institution might suggest.

• VE is a is probably the most active data producer from the university

itself: it generates student data, whether internal or external users, it

generates data on teachers involved in VE, and also generates data

on the process of VE itself. In many cases, the value of such data can

even be economic, because online learning is already an important

market, and there may be tensions between “pure” university

orientation and commercial orientation. If these tensions are

resolved in a pragmatic way, VE makes the university an economic

actor in the markets of the current knowledge society.

MODE 1:

Universities where existing distance education or

continuing education determine an evolution towards forms

of VE.

MODE 2:

Universities where the VE

pioneering forms are developed

by teachers interested in

innovation, and for some specific

circumstance, this initial practice

is adopted and integrated into the

overall structure of the university.

MODE 3:

Universities where a specific condition triggers an opportunistic

process of VE development. This condition can be an existing

advantage (pioneers in the production of CDs), the needs of a

language center, or a student demand which cannot be solved by

traditional means.

MODE 4:

Universities where VE is

triggered by a decision at the

highest level of direction,

either because VE is seen

as a necessary evolution in

the mission and

characteristics of the

university, or because VE

should be developed as a

necessity to face the

challenges of the university.

In these universities, VE

usually starts from scratch.

Some questions

• how can universities face the challenge of assimilating the

reflective and economic power of VE Structures and VE

practices, to generate a new strategy for organization and

incursion or social presence?

• How are universities transformed or, more specifically, which

areas of the university are being transformed by the presence

of these new actors and practices of the knowledge society?