Panel
The Internet in Education Across Borders
Jorge Luis Romeu
Associate Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics
SUNY College at Cortland
Address for Correspondence:
P. O. Box 6134
Syracuse, NY 13217
FAX: (315) 476-8994
romeu@cortland.edu
PUBLISHED/PRESENTED IN THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1998 SUNY-CIT MTG.
THE "CONFERENCE ON INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES", SUNY-CORTLAND.
ABSTRACT
At present, there are several efforts, governmental and private,
in the US and abroad, to establish courses accross international
borders. One well known such effort is FIPSE's Mobility Program,
that sponsors the integration of multiple institutions in Canada,
Mexico and the US to exchange students. Several universities in
the US and abroad, e.g. SUNY in New York and ITESM in Mexico,
have started using the Internet to teach courses, beyond and
accross international boundaries. There exist, however, many and
serious problems to be resolved in this area. The objective of
this Panel is, precisely, to discuss some of the problems
involved when faculty and students from different countries, with
more than one language, are teaching such courses using the
Internet. The discussants, who have actively participated in
such efforts, will address: (i) mutual advantages/disadvantages
affecting participating faculty, students and institutions; (ii)
legal/administrative problems involved in this issues; (iii)
technical/logistic problems involved; (iv) some proposed
solutions to these problems; (v) proposed steps to encourage
these efforts, internationally; (vi) existing and impending
experiences in this area and (vii) other topics and problems,
dealing with teaching courses accross international borders using
languages and the Internet, that the Panel proposes. Open and
frank discussion of these issues, by the audience, will follow
the exposition.
INTRODUCTION
Higher Education is experiencing drastic changes these days
driven by the drastic changes that society is experimenting. For
example, new teaching approaches and methods are constantly
appearing. They are brought about not only by the technological
advances, but also by the new student needs, profiles,
demographics and economics, among other social changes. And they
are encouraged by leading organizations in the field (e.g.
FIPSE) who seek to implement, in this area, similar advances as
those implemented in other socioeconomic fields, to increase
productivity and decrease costs.
One of these drastic changes is the introduction of the Internet
as a teaching tool. It allows the instructor to project
him/herself beyond the classroom walls. And it allows students
to participate in courses that take place far away, or at times
when they are performing other activities. As a result, an
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entire new cohort of non-traditional students are taking full
advantage of higher education: the concept of "university
without walls" has really taken off. Consequently, new
universities are being created on the concept of Distance
Learning education. And old ones are now including whole
divisions that deal with this new area.
But Distance Learning opens yet another area of great interest:
international education. In the past, students had to travel
abroad to interact and study with foreign professors and peer
students. Today, this is also possible from the student's home
Campus via the Internet and the World Wide Web. Today, there are
many institutions who are already cooperating to teach joint
courses within the country. And there are already some
pioneering institutions that are also starting to teach courses
across international boundaries. In these courses, students of
different countries, using class materials produced by faculty of
different nationalities, who teach the course from different
places, are already working together.
For example, here in SUNY, several faculty are already using the
Web to teach or to exchange information across the border. We
have Web Sites such as FLTEACH, that have support material
accessible by language teachers all over the country. And we
have projects in telecommunications between the University Center
in Albany and the university in Sofia, Bulgaria. And we have
projects in support of Languages Accross the Curriculum. Several
of these project leaders have been invited to attend this panel
and are expected to participate in it.
In addition, several of our Mexican scholars to CIT98 will share
their experiences in the area. Mexican institutions have been
developing Distance Learning accross boundaries, too. ITESO, a
Mexican university in Guadalajara, is teaching courses with the
University of North Texas and ITESM, in Monterrey, started last
Fall teaching graduate courses in education, for students in
several Latin American countries, via their new "virtual
university".
However, if one finds many problems when developing a course
through the Internet in one's own institution, or between
institutions within one's own country, one encounters many more
when doing so across international borders. The objective of
this Panel is to present and discuss some of these problems and
to provide a point of departure for encouraging SUNY faculty to
work on, and to find solutions to them.
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
The first problem encountered when organizing and developing a
Web course across borders is that of finding mutual advantages
and minimizing mutual disadvantages for the interested parties.
These parties are three: the participating instructors, students
and academic institutions. There must be a net gain for each and
everyone of these participants, in order for the distance
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learning project to succeed and prevail.
In addition to the intellectual challenge and the new knowledge
involved, faculty must be able to obtain credit for the time
invested in developing and teaching these courses. This may be
particularly difficult since their respective institutions may
have different accounting systems for faculty time, different
teaching loads, different teaching levels, etc. The Institutions
that will provide credit for faculty time as well as for student
learning may find it difficult to do so, if they do not have a
way of obtaining resources (money) to cover the expenses for
salaries, technology, supplies and other support materials.
Finally, students from different countries, with different
standards of living, different currencies, different economies,
may not be able to pay the same level of tuition and expenses for
their study, creating a difficult situation of inequality vs.
duress.
The second problem that arises in developing such international
courses is that of dealing with legal and administrative
concerns. Courses created and taught in the different countries
will be subject to their respective laws. These, however, may
vary widely as widely vary for example, copyright laws.
Permission to use some materials in one country may not be
required in another, or viceversa. However, since students are
taking part in all of them, such issues must be first resolved.
Administrative procedures to resolve such issues may also vary
extensively and protocols to attack and solve them may not be the
same everywhere, either. In addition, there may be language
differences that may complicate and obscure even further the
issues. However, the use of different languages may well be at
the center of the nature and desirability of teaching such
international courses, in the first place.
A third issue of concern is the infrastructure and logistic
support. In addition to the Web and Internet, Distance Learning
also requires the use of other more traditional means of
communications such as phone, FAX, mail and land transportation.
These may differ in type, quality, availability, cost,
reliability, etc. Imagine a final exam to be taken
simultaneously in four countries and, in one of them, phone lines
are down and no faxes operate that day.
CONCLUSIONS
These are only a small set of problems, among the many that exist
and that will be discussed in this session. The Panelists will
bring to this meeting their working experiences in their
different fields, implementing these distance learning
techniques. Along with the problems, the Panelists will also
provide the working solutions they have implemented in their
work, to cope with these problems and succeed.
The objective of this Panel is to engage faculty in the activity
of teaching across borders. We believe that this is an
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invaluable first step to encourage many more students to
participate in international education. Students who are
learning a second language will find strong incentives in taking,
in their own Campuses, courses taught in these new languages, on
content related to their academic interest. And they will also
find strong interest in interacting with people, from the
countries that speak this new language.
Once such international interest is established, the next logical
step for these students is to take a semester abroad. It will
now be so much more productive, with their stronger knowledge of
the language and of the people, acquired through the Distance
Learning course. Finally, these students would then become
resources, in the corresponding visiting Campuses, for students
there who would be learning their language, in the technical
sense that resources are established in language programs such as
SUNY Binghamton's LxC.
We believe that this is going to be the future trend in
international. We also believe that those organizations who take
the lead in this direction will benefit most. If this premise is
correct, then the concern will be about (i) how to direct our
efforts to position ourselves and our institutions to better
achieve this goal and about (ii) what steps to take to start
moving toward it. We trust this Panel will provide some answers
in this direction.