The present demand for a highly educated, flexible workforce who will need to update their knowledge continuously changes the way higher education is offered, with world wide competition for students. For example, Australian universities have agreements with Malaysian colleges to ensure themselves of a substantial inflow of students from that country. Another example is the thousands of corporate universities in the USA: educational institutes set up by companies for their own workforce. Companies like Nokia, Lufthansa and Heineken have done the same in Europe. Eighty percent of these corporate institutes use distant learning and electronic teaching environments. Dutch universities also have to take these developments into account and act on them, according Van Vught.
They have to do this partly for educational reasons. Van Vught defines the ideal academic learning process as one of knowledge development, in which universities put the emphasis on 'communication, co-operation and scientific discourse between students and teachers, as well as among students'. The suitable context exists, he states, when combining the virtual environment of the Web (with substantial, specialist databases, accessible from every location) with the real campus of a university. 'With the student as a modern composer of his or her own curriculum.'
But also for economical reasons it is attractive for universities to base its education on the Web. Once a course is on-line the relatively low cost for scientific staff can create large advantages. However, one institute alone cannot sustain the cost of developing and maintaining such a programme. A number of governments, therefore, help institutes in the development, for example in Finland and the United Kingdom.
Fortunately our country is not left behind, Van Vught observes. And the University of Twente plays an important role in this. Last year the UT was one of the founding members of the National ICT-Network Academy, a consortium of ICT- and telecom companies, banks, insurance companies and a few universities and 'hogescholen'. This academy will open its portal on 1 January 2001. The UT is also involved in Education Secretary Hermans' initiative for the Digital University.
Memorandum
The name the UT has made for itself in the area of ICT research and education is one of the important factors determining the UT's involvement with these, and other, initiatives. The university offers a number of important degree courses in the area of ICT and has worked for over a year on introducing C@mpus, an education concept which enables students to use ICT to 'get to know and experience one or more academic communities'. 'C@mpus is our answer to the educational challenge of information and communication technology in higher education.'
To this end the UT developed the Web-based education support system Teletop. Van Vught let it be known that earlier that day a memorandum of understanding had been signed with IBM, in which was set down that this system would be integrated in IBM's Lotus Learning Space, under the header 'Teletop, powered by Lotus'. In this way the system will become available world wide.
