"The UOC can help to compensate for the lack of teachers in Africa"

Higher education is increasingly moving towards online education. We are going through a very interesting period in this respect, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of higher education institutions and centres moving to e-learning. Massive online open courses (MOOCs) are shaking the foundations of universities in the United States, as well as in Europe and the rest of the world. At the same time, the need for education is growing rapidly all around us.

There are currently some 80 million people who have no access to any sort of education. There are 250 million people with access to poor quality education, mainly in developing countries, but also in Europe. And there are 800 million people who are illiterate. There are also 650 million people who neither work nor study.

"Higher education has an excellent reputation because it has been shown to provide better economic standing"

That's right. Between now and 2040 the demand will increase fourfold: from 100 million learners currently in higher education to 400 million in 2040. Higher education has an excellent reputation because it has been shown to provide better economic standing. This will bring with it a growing need for quality online education, which is what the UOC is offering now. Africa needs over two million more teachers, it's a desperate situation. So we need people who can train teachers to provide quality online education. It's an urgent need. The ICDE has commissioned the UOC, together with the SAIDE, to develop courseware programmes for trainers of distance education teachers in quality open, distance and online learning. The UOC knows all about the methodology and can create marvellous courses that will give teachers the skills to provide quality online education. In doing so, it can help to compensate for the lack of teachers in Africa. The UOC and the SAIDE will create a courseware platform for training teacher trainers in in open, distance and online learning. Different agents in the education sector in Africa will be able to use, modify and adapt these courses to suit their needs. That's the beauty of open education: you can copy, use and modify it as you like. The traditional teaching model has changed. Today we know more about how students learn and which are the most effective methodologies. A teacher talking for 45 minutes to class of students does not work. What we need to do is to provide students with resources and encourage them to take a more active role. At the UOC you know a lot about this. We need a new way of thinking about online education. It's not about technology; it's about teaching and methodology. The ICDE has no stance on whether education should be public or private, but we do ask that there should be a concern for quality. All students, whether young or old, have the right to receive quality, economically accessible education. This is something we work on in partnership with UNESCO. But we do not enter the debate on whether education should be public or private. We consider the UOC to be an example of best practice because it meets all of these objectives. I'll tell you something, when I arrived in Barcelona I gave the taxi driver the address in Avinguda Tibidabo and he said: "You're going to the UOC, right?" He turned out to be a UOC student, and told me that it was a very good university because it allowed him to study from home.

I think that the UOC should be very happy to have this good reputation among the public. Not many universities are this highly valued.

"The teaching model of MOOCs is not viewed positively in some areas"

As an organisation, we have no official view. Personally, I think that MOOCs are a new distance education methodology that has become very popular, but which remains one methodology among many. That said, the teaching model of MOOCs is not viewed positively in some areas. In the Nordic countries, the multiple-choice examination methodology does not have a good reputation. We believe that higher education should train a person to be independent and critical, and assessment through multiple-choice is not sufficient to do this.

What has really made MOOCs popular is that they provide easy access to education, and a wide range of courses is available. In my view, the positive thing about this type of course is that it can give certain people a taste for learning and motivate them to enrol in higher education. Despite the boom we're seeing at the moment, these courses will find their natural place, as one option among many other methodologies.