Public Part of VIDE

The public part of VIDE consists of several elements like publications, invitations to comment, documentation and databases - all open to the general public. We think that there is a need for structured information and communication on the net. Project reports, For instance the interim report of the VOCTADE project, could be found on the net at the time this report was "due" for Brussels - some links, which are typical for the web, had been integrated into the text of the report.

You might go from here to these reports if you want to leave this page. Inspite of the links mentioned, this form of a project report still resembles the old form of a linear text with several possibilities to skip parts of the text or to return to pages already "consumed". To characterize this bookish type of publication (inspite of links, which are comparable to the function of footnotes in scientific texts) I would call this type of text "flat text". In the next step we find a much more complex system of information processing - a "deeper" document structure, impossible to "read", but built for the sake of structuring the object in its best possible format. It is in a matrix structure of 64 cells - the depth of the elements may vary according to the ammount and structure of the information accessible. Lets call it a honeycomb structure (http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ZIFF/cells.htm) where it is possible to navigate through the cells and to hit the goal within this matrix structure instantly. The number of cells should not be enlarged: With the structure of 64 cells we have reached the boundaries of one screen¹!

The characteristic aspect of such a form of document is a matrix, a surface-layer of orientation combined with an indepth structure ofcontent, content meaning again texts with references of some kind. It is possible to compare each label of the cells with a door, an invitation to step in.

In the case of our interim report we can show the difference: In clicking to the list of governmental university provision in the United Kingdom we find behind the door a list of institutions - in one case there is a "link" to the ICDL database: the original text of decription of this database, which gives all information "about" - (see also the chapter on FUKUR )

What we are striving for in the current work is to navigate directly to the institution and there into the section relevant for our research: distance education provision, accreditation, courses etc. So the "link" has itself a double function until now: either it is a link to a text "about" or it is a connection right "into" the object of interest.

Both versions have positive and negative aspects: Certainly it will be better to come near to the original when you are interested, but on the other hand you might get lost in this process and leave the flat cosecutive textual structure.

Consequently we have to look for the next "generation" of structuring documents, where it should be possible to pivot such flat matrices into any dimension in order to gain "slices" of orientation of the reality described. Right now we are able to directly spot objects according to the dimensions: country and type(level) of DE provision; there should be a standardized way to trace objects according to other dimensions like subject matter, money, duration, accreditation etc.

It is really easy to do this if our database is fixed according to all these categories, then you just filter out and find instantly the specific combination of attributes you were looking for²

The last step of such a strategy must necessarily be the inclusion of time in the sense of actuality: most information looses actuality in the strictly empirical sense shortly after inclusion into a documentation. Best example is a telephone directory which as a whole set of information starts to loose actuality the day it is printed because of people moving, new addresses etc.. In everyday empirical research we know this problem with students moving or changing names or simply dying: We may calculate that some 10% of our student population are not any longer accessible at the end of one semester under the address they gave us at the beginning of the semester.

The power to forget

virtual workplace

virtual reality

virtual labaratory

Virtual University

The need: a virtual course in Distance Education

Copyleft

With the course "Foundations in Distance Education" by the FernUniversität, all articles included in a "reader" had to be cleared for copyright. Many times a year inquiries of similar kind come in from all over the world, asking for copyright clearance for articles or even booklets of our institute. So one of the necessary decisions for a virtual institute is the "copyleft" policy which means that copyright stays with the authors and, since the institution will not make lots of money by trading copyrighted items - visitors may read and work free of charge, the copyright clearance department will run out of busines as soon as all the items necessary are "available" on the net. This specific feature is one of the most positive developments in the field of new media: instead of watching regulations like that originals must not be referred to to an extent longer than x lines without copyright clearance one may send the reader directly to the original. The aim of such publication policy is to"copyleft" all research - we think that building a knowledge society may not be restricted by copyright procedures. "If public money went into research there is no reason why the results should be privatized."

For the time until then as in any institute in any university you must have the possibility to visit libraries specialized in DE and databases specialized in DE courses/ and institutions.

There are many precise advantages of the "virtual Institute" over a real institute: no extra infrastructure: new office buildings, caretaker, special staff, set budget, holidays, no strike, no cars, after the initial phase no additional labour cost .
Address: On the WWW
Staff: only members, paid for by the public anyway or on contract basis for definite projects.
Budget: no "own" basic budget. Only project money: For the first 3 years here is a budget
Corporate identity: not easier to accomplish than in real life.
Need: To be decided upon regularly- if superfluous, easy to close down without social consequences.

There are only few experts within these institutions to do research on the topic of Distance Education (mostly in the framework of universities) Not even the installation of an European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) has had relevant impact on the knowledge about the different organizational structures of teaching and learning in Europe - The Maastricht treaty though, recommends this mode of teaching and learning and huge numbers of projects are funded by the European Union to bring about a change in the situation that vocational training and tertiary education fall short of the need to produce more and more qualifications on a mass basis and with the goal of enabling their holders to be mobile within the European Union. - But: All legislation on transferability starts out with the notion that the regulations of the country where the citizen of Europe wants to work in, are to be respected.

European mammooth institute?

Firstly: In such an institute there would be representatives from every member state, specialized in vocational training and distance education, writing reports about the national situations in comparison with all the others and making recommendations for action. There would be a huge documentation department where all best practice examples of courses and curricula would be open for inspection for everyone. And there would be a department specialized in the collection of data from all NARIC centres throughout Europe. Together with the infrastructural staff this institute would have the size of a big University-institute with at least 80-100 permanent staff .

Secondly: This institute could try to adapt many existing courses from one language / social setting to another as needed.
It would have a huge database with most courses available, would do own research to objectify white spots in the map of vocational training at a distance (media specialists, computer staff). It also would collect all the audiovisual products for teaching purposes already existing in Europe, present catalogues and make available such products or parts of it on request. Staff as needed would sum up to several dozen didactic experts from all relevant fields.

Thirdly this institute would have a huge law department working on all the copyright issues connected with such products especially when adaptations have to be made.

The budget of such an institute would surmount that of CEDEFOP and all NARIC Centres together many vocational training institutions: some 100 MECU a year could be estimated.

But: Education has never had such an impact on budgets that there could be hope that Europe would invest such sums. Alternatively there are many projects, institute departments and individuals interested in this field of research and development. Research is being undertaken, new products are being developed, papers are being printed and hopefully the first consortia will eventually put some courses foward, and be on the "market".
If the European Union wants to develop more knowledge about Distance Education and Vocational Training in the Tertiary level, the only way to accomplish this without investment of large sums of money is to build on and foster the roots of interest of institutes, and individuals by helping to install a common netbased information and communication system, open for the public, a strong instrument to communicate and to present products.

The biggest problem of researchers today is that the time needed to collect money for research projects and, once granted, to document expenditures in various forms according to special rules, to contact different administrations etc., surmounts the time for research itself.

The danger of this development is that more and more scientists- paid for by their governments - egange in this game and lose contact to the scientific community. The more money is promised for "areas of interest", the more the scientific community will change: loosing its members to the field of expertise in how to collect big grants for the future- the same scientists turn into proposal-experts and are lost for their peer group.
To avoid this development on a larger scale than already existing, Europe should grant sums of money to existing universities for their special purposes. The ideology of a free market, where calls for tender result in the best or the cheapest offer will never go along with the ideology of scientific endeavour in universities. But in times where university budgets are cut, departments are more or less forced to play the game of competition in calls for tender. The consequences are still to be researched.

Consequence: "VIDE"

Theoretical Rationale of VIDE

Didactics of Higher Education

So the ideal of the university (unity of research and teaching) which we, since Humboldt, are still striving for, is yet to be reached. There are so many small didactical tricks, gadgets of good teachers, that most university teachers hold on to an artisan model of academic teaching and learning.⁴

There have been long discussions about the "use" of new media all over the world, in all academic senates, in all faculties -and still this discussion is going on: If the new media have such strong impact on teaching and learning as it is told by its promoters then most of higher education could be transferred to a media-mode, leaving the faculty of most universities either unemployed or restricted to the one sphere that most people think still cannot be dealt with adequately by computers: the person to person contact for the sake of "academic socialization" "Canned knowledge" and automatic testing of fundamentals as a prerequisite to direct contact would screen the customers and make sure that only people capable of understanding what is dealt with could have contact with "academia".

For a rather specialized field of research it could be possible to restrict participation to experts. All societies have elaborated on this procedures of becoming an expert, a peer. Rites of initiation are known from prehistoric tribes as well as from academia in ivy league universities.

Maybe there is something like linearity still determining where a student goes - but it is not causal to the train of thought. For instance working in a huge library with access to the most important books, I could stick to the goal to find a certain reference and not leave the building until I found it. This turns out to be not so easy in the Net.
I am not talking about advertisement connected with search machines - one gets used to it. I am talking about the percentage of exactness previewed by the search machine: Intelligent search machinery gives a hint to security of hits - when I look up old catalogues searching a certain edition of a certain book, there is only one possibility of certainty: either it is there or not. Search machines function like my dream-associations: they present everything they can get hold of, even if I was looking for something specific: search machines do not want to dissappoint me.
The technique of writing reports has changed with the introduction of computer editing of texts: The loss of linearity has come about with word processing - in former times it also was possible to include aspects which had been forgotten in the first draft, but the ease with which we are able to again and again include more and more aspects tends to influence our train of thought, away from structured, set ordered systematic thinking towards additive, allusion-geared arguments. The text coming out of such processes has a linear look inspite of the allusionistic style of work. Didactically speaking this is one of the main problems in higher education: authors rather add small elements to a field of interest but the theory, the system of the subject area, the big plan gets lost. It is a problem not only for distance education but for all scholastic endeavour: In German the term Wissenschaftsdidaktik has a connotation difficult to translate. I would suggest a new term because "didactics of science" denotes more the sphere of pedagogical tricks for Biology than scholastic endeavours at large: So I suggest "scholastics" (how does it sound?). Let me put it into plain words; I refrain from reading an