DUBLIN CITY University has announced a “major commitment” to online education.
By 2015 it is expected that more than 80 per cent of university programmes will be available online or in a combination of online and face-to-face approaches.
“The way students are engaging with information is changing dramatically,” , said Prof Brian MacCraith, DCU president. “And the future of learning is blended – a blend of the traditional face to face, the online synchronous and the online asynchronous.”
It is also planned to train staff and make about 30 programmes available online or with blended content as soon as the 2012-13 academic year.
“We are recognising that the way students learn, access information and collaborate is through online platforms,” Prof MacCraith told The Irish Times. . “The motivation is to improve the student education experience through technology-enhanced learning platforms.”
He described how content could be delivered as podcasts, real-time online tutorials and e-learning.
“There are going to be a range of experiences for the student. It’s getting away from the direct transmission approach to a more participative approach.”
By next year, the university hopes more than 100 academic staff will have completed training in online education, and a further 200 will be trained by 2015.
“There’s a recognition that this is not about putting your lecture notes up online,” Prof MacCraith said.
“In deploying all these platforms, you only get the enhancement of learning if it’s based on good pedagogical practice.”
The strategy stands to facilitate teaching links with overseas partners too, said Prof MacCraith. “The global dimension to this is significant,” he said. “It allows us to embrace teaching and learning collaborations with partners in India, the US and China.”
This month also sees the start of a pilot trial where DCU is partnering Google to provide Google-powered laptops called Chromebooks to selected students. It is the first European university to do so, according to Prof MacCraith.
To demonstrate the capabilities of online technology, Tuesday’s launch at the Helix in Glasnevin featured a live chat over Skype between Prof MacCraith and learning technology analyst Elliot Masie, who was teaching a class in the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.
“If we just listen to the hype, we will be taken in the wrong direction,” said Mr Masie during the exchange. “Don’t look for a solution, look for an environment where many solutions can happen.”
