'Content is everywhere, so we have to think about what we can add as institutions or teachers'

I had two main reasons. First, I had heard a lot about the university from Tony Bates and other people, but I had never had the chance to visit it. I was very curious about the UOC, due to its similarities with Athabasca University. Second, an expert from the UOC invited me to come. How could I say no? [Laughter.] I am quite honoured that so many people have spent so much time with me, from the UOC Vice President of Technology to the doctoral students. This has allowed me to learn more about different tasks, from quality control to the production of the scholarly journal here. I have to say that I am really impressed by the eLearn Center and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute in particular. They are doing good work, as the topic of the network society is relevant to research in law, sociology, business, etc. Athabasca University was founded in 1974 as a correspondence university. We found it extraordinarily difficult to move into the online world, whereas the UOC was born into it. You are much closer to being a native institution. Part of my frustration at Athabasca is just convincing people to embrace the Net personally, in their own lives. In any event, we are both focused on providing opportunities to people. That is exactly the same. It is also worth mentioning size; the UOC is slightly bigger than Athabasca University ? we have 38,000 students, while the UOC has 56,000. Nevertheless, there are not too many differences; the size of the faculty and the role of our counsellors and tutors are quite similar. It is very nice to come to another open university, because we have the same challenges and solutions. I am quite amazed, as the structure and topics of your master?s and other degree programmes are almost identical to ours. It would be very easy to develop an exchange programme for both content and teachers, as well as to give our respective students an international experience. Distance education or open learning has always had to be delivered by means of some sort of technology. Originally, it was the postal service and textbooks; then came broadcast technologies; and now it?s the Internet. Thus people talk about three generations. However, I do not particularly like that, because I would like to think that we are driven by pedagogy rather than technology. In distance education, it is impossible to separate both realities. They have to work together: technology is the beat, and pedagogy is the movement. I prefer to think about how pedagogy is changing and how we use it with technology. From the point of view of educational psychology and how people learn, I can distinguish three generations. The first generation used cognitive-behaviourism models. It was based on independent study and printed correspondence, and knowledge was seen as something concrete and solid. The teacher?s role was to take what he or she knew and give it to the students. It was a very simple way of thinking about teaching and learning. Then, constructivism came along and put the stress on how to create new content by adapting people?s own ideas. The best way to do that was through group work. Learning activities were used to encourage people to express their differences. We learned together. Today, the Internet has a deeper impact on people than printed materials or broadcasting. It is not only used for interaction. We have begun to realize that the Net can be used to form network relationships with objects, content and machines, generating new knowledge. This is the third model, called connectivism. I think that the role of the teacher has to change quite fundamentally, because teachers do not know everything, even in their own area of expertise. Teachers have to learn to be an active and central node in many different networks, but they are not the only influence on the student. They have to encourage learners to take information from many different sources and help them. Teachers now have to show people how to filter, select and modify information. This is a very important point in distance education. We take great pride in textbooks and learning guides. Now, with networks, we can link to content and open-education resources. The Internet is making content cheaper and cheaper, as well as available everywhere. If you only focus on creating content, you will lose value, because content is everywhere. We thus have to think about what we can add as institutions or teachers. That is a major challenge for us. Sure. Actually, my research project consists in building a boutique social network for the Athabasca community, for all our teachers, students and alumni. It?s hard, because everyone goes to Facebook or LinkedIn. The value of a social network grows as more people use it. It?s quite revolutionary for us at Athabasca University, because our students almost always work by themselves, so this is the first time they will have a special, secure place just for them. It will be a social network based on platforms and open source. Users will be able to create content that will not disappear over the course, and they will be able to decide who can see their posts. I cannot say that it is not a problem, but it is getting smaller every year because of the growth of the Internet in developing countries. This has to do with personal computers, but also telephones and smartphones, which are becoming ubiquitous everywhere. The challenge is to develop pedagogical methods based on the assumption that people have access to new technologies, but that this access may not be free and from the comfort of their own bedrooms. They may have to walk to a local Internet café and spend a small amount of money to get the information if they think it is useful to them. We have the content, skills and knowledge, and now we have the technical means to make them available, too. Although it is sometimes hard for us to give these things away, we cannot expect people in developing countries to pay the same amount as people in rich ones. With the semantic web, machines will be able to make connections with other machines, so it will open the door to much more connective learning environments. It will probably help us analyse our students? many activities. These days, students operate in a black box: we do not know anything about them. Our counsellors may talk to them once or twice a week, but they do not really know what problems they might be having. That said, it would be crazy to think that we can predict exactly how we are going to use the semantic web. Nobody can know that. I think we have aligned them. They are working together. However, the question is: are they doing so in the best possible way? If not, we may be holding the system back. We are not performing perfectly and I don?t think we ever will, and yet education is one of the only professions where people have decided that they are perfect, which is something I find quite disappointing. I try to be realistic, so I am interested in how we can work with private enterprise to lower the cost and increase the power of our learning opportunities. I hope universities will be efficient enough to survive and add value to society. It is challenging, especially if you look at private universities in the United States. It is really easy for us to say that private services are bad products, but this is not true in loads of cases.