Learning International Network Consortium
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2ndAnnual Symposium & Workshop h c r 2004 a M 6 2 - 5 2 “Creating and Sustaining p Learning Communities” o h s k r o W earning h c L r a M 4 2 International - 3 2 m u etwork i N s o p m y Consortium S PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE LEARNING INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS CONSORTIUM MARCH 23 AND 24, 2004 EDITED BY ELIZABETH MURRAY 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Forward Opening Remarks by Dr. Richard C. Larson 1 Welcoming Remarks by Provost Robert Brown 4 SECTION ONE: A REVIEW OF LINC 7 PROGRAMMATIC INITIATIVES The New Wave: Students Empowering Each Other 8 by Solomon Assefa On:line Global Learning Communities: The Case of 14 Urban Operations Research by Dr. Richard C. Larson Synergistic Experiences in Distance Education On Good 19 Clinical Practice and Other Medical Subjects by Drs. Robert H. Rubin and Honorio Silva Section Two: Communities of learners: 25 What is KnowN? Distance Learning and Communities of Practice 26 by Etienne Wenger Fun as a Magnet to Online Learning Communities 32 by Dr. Lisa Neal Design and Mechanisms of Knowledge: Designing 37 Online Learning Communities by Dr. Reuven Aviv SECTION THREE: ACHIEVING COMMUNITIES 43 OF LEARNERS IN DIFFERENT SETTINGS UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning: 44 Building International Communities by Susan D’Antoni Fostering Web-Based Communities of International Leaders 49 by Dr. Judith Babbitts Harvard University Online Dissemination of Information: 55 An Unrealized Potential by Winthrop Carty 2 SECTION FOUR: UPDATE ON VIRTUAL 58 UNIVERSITIES Opening Opportunities: The Role of Distance Education 59 by Patricio Lopez Del Puerto Open and Virtual Learning for Cross-Cultural Bridging: 68 The Arab Open University Case by Drs. Said Hammad Jahama and Abdel-Elah Al-Ayyoub Formal Higher Education at the Virtual University 74 Of Pakistan by Dr. Naveed A. Malik Distance Education in China and at Tsinghua University: 81 Current Situation and Future Development by Prof. Aimee Wang The Syrian Virtual University: One Year of Successful 84 Operation by Dr. Milad Sebaaly The Necessity of E-Learning for Palestine 90 by Dr. Fouad El-Harazin Technical and Pedagogical Initiatives at the 93 Universite de la Formation Continue to Insure that Distance Study Programs Are Open to All by Mr. Abdeldjebbar Lemnouar and Mr. Khaled Kaid ICT IN AFRICA: CHALLENGES AND 96 ACHIEVEMENTS Partnership for Higher Education in Africa: Using 97 Information and Communications Technology for Teaching, Learning, and Research by Lisbeth Levey The Partnership for African Higher Education and 101 the Challenge of Increasing Participation Rates by Dr. Ahmed Bawa Global E-Quality: Lessons from NetTel@Africa 106 by Dr. Maria Beebe SECTION SIX: NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN 110 DISTANCE LEARNING I-Labs: Performing Laboratory Experiments Across 111 Continents by Dr. Jesus A. del Alamo 3 The eGranary Digital Library: Providing Inexpensive 118 Access to Educational Information Available on the Internet by Cliff Missen Case Study in Learning from a Distance: How New 123 South Wales, Australia and San Diego County, USA Are Improving Education Via Interactive Distance Learning by Jim Moriarty SECTION SEVEN: ADDITIONAL MIT INITIATIVES 127 IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Developmental Entrepreneurship by Dr. Alex “Sandy” 128 Pentland A New Model for Sharing: MIT OpenCoursewWare 132 by Anne Margulies The MIT Public Service Center: Students as Resources 138 by Sally Susnowitz The MIT International Science and Technology 143 Initiatives in Emerging Countries by Sean Gilbert Malaysia University of Science and Technology: 145 A Challenging Project by Dr. Tajul Arus From the Stage to the Screen and Back: Experience 148 With Educational Technology at MUST by Dr. Scott Kennedy 4 Forward The following thirty talks were presented at the Second Annual Symposium of the Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC), which took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 23-24, 2004. The symposium was attended by 118 people from twenty-five countries and was followed by two days of workshops, on March 25-26. LINC is an MIT affiliated community of individuals and organizations that focuses on tertiary education in developing countries. By leveraging technologies of distance learning, LINC seeks to help these countries increase accessibility to quality university education. The two LINC symposia have drawn together educators from all parts of the developing world, many of whom are working in relative isolation with the new e-learning technologies. The annual LINC conference at MIT supports their innovative efforts and sends them back to their home countries with new ideas and a supportive group of colleagues from around the world. The theme of this second LINC symposium was “Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities.” As Richard Larson stated in his Opening Remarks to conference participants, “one of the difficult challenges with distance learning is how to make geographically dispersed students… feel that they are part of a community with other students, with their professors, and also perhaps with actual practitioners of the lessons they are learning.” While Sections Two and Three of the book deal directly with this theme - in both a theoretical and practical context - almost every one of the symposium speakers touched upon this important area to some degree. The thirty presentations included here are not submitted papers, but rather they are the actual symposium talks that have been audio taped, transcribed, and edited by both myself and by the individual speakers. For this reason, they clearly reflect the atmosphere of information sharing and congeniality that characterized the symposium. As a matter of fact, the conference itself spawned an exciting initiative created by nine participants from the Middle East, including Palestine and Israel, as well as Pakistan. The LINC Middle Eastern initiative focuses on the use of distance learning to educate science and math teachers in the region. For more information on this, read the article, “A LINC to E-Learning,” in the October 2004 edition of Technology Review at http://www.technologyreview.com/index.asp . 5 Opening Remarks Presented by Richard C. Larson Professor of Engineering Systems Founder of the Learning International Networks Consortium MIT Welcome to the Second International LINC symposium here at MIT. We are delighted to see so many friendly faces. We see some familiar faces from last year and we see many new people that were not here last year. We welcome you all. On these tables, there should be flags from each of the countries represented and, at last count, there were 25 countries represented in the total registration, including both the symposium and the workshop. We had nineteen countries in attendance last year, so we are definitely in a growth mode! This makes us very happy. The theme this year is Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities. Our goal is to study how online educators can achieve such communities. One of the difficult challenges with distance learning is how to make geographically dispersed students -- say students in their homes or students in scattered villages -- how to make them feel that they are part of a community with other students, with their professors, and also perhaps with actual practitioners of the lessons they are learning. This is certainly an important emerging topic we all want to learn about and ideally, we can all learn about it from each other. Over the next two days, you will hear some case studies related to this challenge, along with reports on exciting projects underway designed to address this issue of online communities. We think it will be a terrific educational experience for all of us. Last year, our LINC symposium was two days. This year we have a four-day event. We are calling the first two days of the conference our “Symposium,” and then many of you are staying on for the second two days on Thursday and Friday that we are calling our “Workshops.” We will have four workshops, two on Thursday and two on Friday, and these are designed to be very collaborative, hands-on learning experiences. On those days, there will be much less of a symposium lecture style; rather, it will be highly interactive, with some sessions involving hands-on computer work. In terms of LINC, our focus is on higher education in developing countries. Many developing countries have only four percent of their young people enrolled in college and university education, whereas in most European and North American countries it can be up to 40, 50, 60%. One of our themes with LINC is that even if you can erect buildings and dormitories overnight, you cannot build faculties overnight. You cannot build the excellent, qualified teachers with Ph.D.s overnight because it takes generations to accomplish this. For a country that has only 4% of its people now being educated at the college or university level, it will take several generations to build up the number of faculty, for example, to the level of 6 faculty/student ratios here at MIT. So it makes good sense that if a developing country has a faculty member who is very talented then that faculty member should be teaching 300 or 3,000 students, rather than just 30 students in a classroom. Such leveraging can be done via distance education, as we will explore over the next four days. As we begin this second annual symposium, we would like to thank three foundations for supporting LINC this year: the Lounsbury Foundation, the Morningside Foundation, and the Lord Foundation. In addition, certain people have worked to make this event possible, and without their assistance and support this conference would not be happening. First and foremost, I would like to thank Carol Sardo who has been working 68-80 hours a week on LINC over the last couple of months.