The University of Oulu is located in central Finland about 1,000 km north of Helsinki. It has a distance education programme which is called Open University Activities and is run by the University Continuing Education Department.

The University of Oulu
Since its foundation in 1958 the influence of the University of Oulu has extended to all fields of life. It has produced new knowledge and it has acted as a focus for intellectual, educational and cultural activity, provided training for academic vocations, and stimulated commercial and industrial life in the northern regions of Finland.

The University of Oulu is situated in the town of Oulu, which is a northern Finnish town with a population of approximately 100,000 on the Gulf of Bothnia. Some 800,000 people live in the sphere of influence of the University of Oulu. Geographically, this area covers half of the area of the whole country.

The University of Oulu has five faculties with a total of some 12,000 students. The Faculties are those of Technology, Medicine, Science, Humanities and Education. The University also has independent institutes. One of them is the Continuing Education Center which is responsible for open university teaching (about 5,500 students) and professional supplementary education (about 4,000 students). In Finnish universities open distance education is organised by centres for continuing education, which are an integral part of Finnish universities. There are no separate distance teaching universities or open universities in Finland. All Finnish universities are state owned.

New Learning Environments

Increasing social pressures and expectations are being targeted at the university, and its functions can be currently divided into the following sectors: research, teaching, regional duties and cultural duties.

As a traditional campus university, the university cannot any longer respond to the requirements set to it in regional development. The university has stated in its strategy paper that the new learning environments, the regional units, and regional, national and international networking are necessary for the university to take care of its core function.

The university of Oulu has been developing new learning environments through three channels. The activities started in the 1980s with the open university which was soon followed by professional supplementary education. In both cases the development of the environment was based on solid cooperation with various educational institutions in the region.

Through various educational experiments and the newly established network, the university gained valuable practical experiences in the principles and models of action of the new learning environments. In this way the new learning environments were adopted quickly as part of the university's basic teaching and research. This development as a whole has meant that the university has opened up and its regional effectiveness has increased

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Routes to the new learning environments

The new learning environments have meant to the university not only the development of a single operating environment, but of many different environments with the same contents but different models of action and different target groups. The goals, students and cooperating partners of the open university, professional supplementary training and basic teaching are different, and so are the models of action in these learning environments. From the viewpoint of the university and its cooperating partners, the synergic benefit is to be found in the common learning materials, applied technology, accumulated experience and established networks.

Open university and continuing education in University of Oulu

Promoting educational equality is one of the cornerstones of the Finnish open university system. Open university education is also considered as an important means of implementing the principle of continuing education. Although the provision of education has increased due to our employment policy, the principles of Finnish open university education have remained the same: studies are open to all and students are fully credited for their courses at the regular university - however, graduation for a degree is possible only if the student is accepted by the university.

The continuing education and training is directed for professionals with university degree and their purpose is to update knowledge and give new competencies. Education and training is organised as seminars, workshops, short courses, training programmes, PD-programmes and scientific conferences.

The CEC of the University of Oulu is one of the leading institutions in Finland in the development of distance education. The operation of the Centre for Educational Technology consists of educational experiments, research work, development of learning environments, national and international co-operation together with a range of educational and consultation services. For example, videoconferencing and www-based learning environments are widely used in several courses.

The University of Oulu has decided to make the strategic choice to develop the university by making use of possibilities offered by new technology and the new learning environments. The university has been expanding its activities by developing its educational services and by searching for new types of student and co-operation partners. In this way the activities have expanded from regional to national and international levels.

An example of this development work is the 15-credit course in educational technology offered by the open university. Its purpose is to provide the participants with the skills needed to plan and organize new learning environments, to develop educational applications connected with the new technology, and to do scientific research. The course is run by virtual means in several locations at the same time. The university and other educational institutes have formed a functional, organizational, economic and technological network for the purposes of this training. Part of the teaching takes place by means of videoconferencing. The university has a videoconferencing bridge of its own for these purposes. Part of the teaching takes place in local institutes in which there are also trained tutors. A special electronic interactive environment, mainly based on the World Wide Web, has been developed for the purposes of this training. Students use this environment to communicate with each other. Personal portfolios, students basic tools of learning are located in this environment.

Continuing Education Centre has a main responsibility of the use of distance education courses and training modules at the University of Oulu. The faculties use distance teaching methods only occasionally at the moment, but there are plans of using it in the future.

Financing: student fees

code structure of financing

A. 1/3 co-operating institutes, 1/3 open university, 1/3 student fees

B. government financing

C. enterprises

D. student fees

E. student fees

F. government financing

G. student fees

H. student fees

I EU-funding

Courses development policies

If needed, courses will be developed to match more properly to customer needs. Not only customer needs, but also global direction of development, for example in Internet and videoconferencing, is dictating our development policies, of course. Now and especially in the future more emphasis has to be set on international co-operation. CEC is and will be a partner in several EU-projects. That's why study-material and learning environments will be developed or translated.

Open University staff:

Administration	Planning	Teachers
6	8	about 200

Teachers from the faculties

Continuing Education Staff

Administration	Planning	Teachers/Tutors
5	10	about 100

Face-to-face teaching is still the most typical model of studying, but more often teaching is carried out by means of new technology and new study models. Continuing Education Centre will continue the development of new learning environments in co-operation with the Faculty of Education, where important research work is done concerning the distance learning.