Interview with Interview with Anastasia Natsina
"In literary studies there exists a great difference between traditional open universities and virtual universities"
February , 2007 / By Cristina Rius
Anastasia Natsina
Anastasia Natsina is the author of the article "Teaching Literature in Open and Distance Teaching:
A Comparative Study of Literary Teaching in Nine European Universities", to be published in the
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education journal of June 2007. She has relied on the
collaboration of the OpenLit research team from the Humanities School at the Open Hellenic
University (www.openlit.gr), under the academic guidance of Takis Kayalis. Natsina took part in the
Literary Studies in the European Framework: Looking Ahead seminar held at the UOC last December.
What does this study consist in?
This is a project jointly funded by the European Union and the Greek Ministry of Education, and is expected to last for two and a half years. We have carried out an analysis of sixteen literature syllabuses from European open and distance universities in order to see how literature is taught. We attempted to choose universities in different categories and the result was a group of nine: the Open Hellenic University, the University of Tolouse-Le Mirail (SED), the University of Bourgogne-Dijon (Centre de Formation Ouverte et à Distance), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, the Open University of the United Kingdom, the Oscail-National Distance Education Centre of Ireland, the Telematics University Guglielmo Marconi of Italy, and the Open University of Hagen in Germany.
When the project was finished, in April last year, we organised a seminar on the sixteen syllabuses, which became the fist world seminar on literature learning in open and distance universities. The conclusions were gathered in a volume of essays to be used as material for experimental teaching.
What was the specific aim of the study?
To develop the best methodology for the teaching of literature in distance higher education.
What does the study show? What have you "found out"?
Well, first of all, that there is hardly any bibliography available on teaching literature at a distance higher education level. Consequently, we find ourselves in a very new field of research.
So what is the kind of teaching that is put into practice?
Firstly, it must be said that there exists a great difference between traditional open universities and virtual universities. Our study only includes two virtual universities, the UOC and the Telematics University Guglielmo Marconi. The latter was founded in 2004 by the then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The rest are traditional open universities, and they work with textbooks or notes, and they include all the necessary material to teach, all the content to be transmitted to students, homework, activities… There is therefore a need for interactive lecturers. Teaching literature is not like teaching history, i.e., teaching facts; teaching literature means teaching the interpretation of texts, and this has been traditionally done face to face: I do it, you see it, and you learn it… It is very difficult to emulate this in distance universities.
How did most universities consulted by you go about doing this?
Most of them incorporated interactive elements into the teaching of literature. The main problem you may come across in distance teaching is falling into the trap of offering knowledge in an encyclopaedic way. Most of them have attempted to overcome this obstacle by introducing interactive elements, questions, homework, activities... so that the student may stop where he deems necessary in order to reflect on things, in order that everything may seem a debate during a seminar. This is what traditional open universities do with their written material. They also have audio and video materials, but this is not the basic didactic material and it is only useful to accompany, to stop in order to listen to a debate among literary critics and then go back to the book. At any rate, this is an interruption of the class.
In all, it must be said that there are traditional open universities that have carried out a very good task, such as that of the United Kingdom, which has incorporated interactive elements into its books, something that turns out to be very effective to study literature, as it has managed to emulate a debate among critics. This is not at all easy, but they have done it.
In this sense, shouldn't universities on the Internet have some advantages?
Indeed, because virtual universities have the opportunity of offering everything, of placing all kinds of materials within student reach through a computer screen. In addition, they can offer it all together, at the same time, to anyone doing a click, without interruptions. This implies that they can contribute the merging of different ways of learning, and when they are all incorporated into a computer, they allow students greater interactivity, to choose the method they prefer at that moment. Associations are faster, teaching is more effective. It is undoubtedly the great advantage of virtual universities when compared to traditional open universities.
Do the two virtual universities analysed by you look like one other?
Not at all. The Italian university has no hypertext, for instance, and each course consists of 15 hours of video reading: what they offer are recorded lectures. It is a reproduction of the traditional university, but it is not interactive. Your student there is totally passive. On the other hand, the UOC has made it possible for everything to be interactive: there are hypertexts, links… Internet is a means and there are people that use it in a more creative way or that make a greater effort. The UOC has shown different ways to do very interesting things, it is a unique example. It has carried out a lot of research and has developed a new instrument of learning, which is the hypertext.
Leaving aside teaching techniques, are there many differences regarding the content in the various syllabuses?
What we have discovered is that they have distanced themselves from national literatures. Even though French literature of English literature or other literatures can be read at conventional universities, there is a tendency in open universities to teach literature in general, or to teach courses of comparative literature. The universities we have analysed offer more than one literature course. One such case is the UOC, which offers the possibility of studying Catalan literature, but also Humanities, which includes Literature. Out of the sixteen literature syllabuses analysed in these universities – or of the syllabuses that include literature 6ndash;, only four are of a national literature, such as for instance Catalan literature.
What is the reason for this, in your opinion?
I think this has to do with the actual nature of open universities, as they are geared towards a wider public than traditional universities. And, despite the fact that each time there is more and more young people with an interest in distance education, most of the public is of an adult age and, therefore, they do their studies not so much in order to find a job, but rather because they have an important desire to increase their general culture.
There is another factor that may have influenced this. One could say that the literature departments at the universities are going through a crisis, as literature is increasingly being merged with other studies. In fact, they are probably following a general trend in the world of higher education teaching, where there are attempts at getting programmes to cross frontiers and to reach a greater number of public.
How does all this fit into the European Higher Education Area?
As opposed to conventional higher education teaching, both the traditional and the virtual open universities focus mainly on the student. As they cannot offer lectures, they make available to students tutors that look after them individually, and this comes closer to what is being sought in the EHEA. Conventional universities will probably have something to learn from open universities, even if the latter do not yet have the same public and economic recognition that traditional universities have always had.
This is a project jointly funded by the European Union and the Greek Ministry of Education, and is expected to last for two and a half years. We have carried out an analysis of sixteen literature syllabuses from European open and distance universities in order to see how literature is taught. We attempted to choose universities in different categories and the result was a group of nine: the Open Hellenic University, the University of Tolouse-Le Mirail (SED), the University of Bourgogne-Dijon (Centre de Formation Ouverte et à Distance), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, the Open University of the United Kingdom, the Oscail-National Distance Education Centre of Ireland, the Telematics University Guglielmo Marconi of Italy, and the Open University of Hagen in Germany.
When the project was finished, in April last year, we organised a seminar on the sixteen syllabuses, which became the fist world seminar on literature learning in open and distance universities. The conclusions were gathered in a volume of essays to be used as material for experimental teaching.
What was the specific aim of the study?
To develop the best methodology for the teaching of literature in distance higher education.
What does the study show? What have you "found out"?
Well, first of all, that there is hardly any bibliography available on teaching literature at a distance higher education level. Consequently, we find ourselves in a very new field of research.
So what is the kind of teaching that is put into practice?
Firstly, it must be said that there exists a great difference between traditional open universities and virtual universities. Our study only includes two virtual universities, the UOC and the Telematics University Guglielmo Marconi. The latter was founded in 2004 by the then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The rest are traditional open universities, and they work with textbooks or notes, and they include all the necessary material to teach, all the content to be transmitted to students, homework, activities… There is therefore a need for interactive lecturers. Teaching literature is not like teaching history, i.e., teaching facts; teaching literature means teaching the interpretation of texts, and this has been traditionally done face to face: I do it, you see it, and you learn it… It is very difficult to emulate this in distance universities.
How did most universities consulted by you go about doing this?
Most of them incorporated interactive elements into the teaching of literature. The main problem you may come across in distance teaching is falling into the trap of offering knowledge in an encyclopaedic way. Most of them have attempted to overcome this obstacle by introducing interactive elements, questions, homework, activities... so that the student may stop where he deems necessary in order to reflect on things, in order that everything may seem a debate during a seminar. This is what traditional open universities do with their written material. They also have audio and video materials, but this is not the basic didactic material and it is only useful to accompany, to stop in order to listen to a debate among literary critics and then go back to the book. At any rate, this is an interruption of the class.
In all, it must be said that there are traditional open universities that have carried out a very good task, such as that of the United Kingdom, which has incorporated interactive elements into its books, something that turns out to be very effective to study literature, as it has managed to emulate a debate among critics. This is not at all easy, but they have done it.
In this sense, shouldn't universities on the Internet have some advantages?
Indeed, because virtual universities have the opportunity of offering everything, of placing all kinds of materials within student reach through a computer screen. In addition, they can offer it all together, at the same time, to anyone doing a click, without interruptions. This implies that they can contribute the merging of different ways of learning, and when they are all incorporated into a computer, they allow students greater interactivity, to choose the method they prefer at that moment. Associations are faster, teaching is more effective. It is undoubtedly the great advantage of virtual universities when compared to traditional open universities.
Do the two virtual universities analysed by you look like one other?
Not at all. The Italian university has no hypertext, for instance, and each course consists of 15 hours of video reading: what they offer are recorded lectures. It is a reproduction of the traditional university, but it is not interactive. Your student there is totally passive. On the other hand, the UOC has made it possible for everything to be interactive: there are hypertexts, links… Internet is a means and there are people that use it in a more creative way or that make a greater effort. The UOC has shown different ways to do very interesting things, it is a unique example. It has carried out a lot of research and has developed a new instrument of learning, which is the hypertext.
Leaving aside teaching techniques, are there many differences regarding the content in the various syllabuses?
What we have discovered is that they have distanced themselves from national literatures. Even though French literature of English literature or other literatures can be read at conventional universities, there is a tendency in open universities to teach literature in general, or to teach courses of comparative literature. The universities we have analysed offer more than one literature course. One such case is the UOC, which offers the possibility of studying Catalan literature, but also Humanities, which includes Literature. Out of the sixteen literature syllabuses analysed in these universities – or of the syllabuses that include literature 6ndash;, only four are of a national literature, such as for instance Catalan literature.
What is the reason for this, in your opinion?
I think this has to do with the actual nature of open universities, as they are geared towards a wider public than traditional universities. And, despite the fact that each time there is more and more young people with an interest in distance education, most of the public is of an adult age and, therefore, they do their studies not so much in order to find a job, but rather because they have an important desire to increase their general culture.
There is another factor that may have influenced this. One could say that the literature departments at the universities are going through a crisis, as literature is increasingly being merged with other studies. In fact, they are probably following a general trend in the world of higher education teaching, where there are attempts at getting programmes to cross frontiers and to reach a greater number of public.
How does all this fit into the European Higher Education Area?
As opposed to conventional higher education teaching, both the traditional and the virtual open universities focus mainly on the student. As they cannot offer lectures, they make available to students tutors that look after them individually, and this comes closer to what is being sought in the EHEA. Conventional universities will probably have something to learn from open universities, even if the latter do not yet have the same public and economic recognition that traditional universities have always had.