www.icde.org
November 2009
ICDE Highlights An activity report from the International Council for Open and Distance Education
Introduction On behalf of the ICDE Secretariat, I am delighted to introduce ICDE Highlights, an insight into ICDE’s activities over the past twelve months. It has been a busy period indeed for ICDE, beginning with the 2008 SCOP meeting – marking the culmination of ICDE’s 70th anniversary celebrations – and the UNESCO Global Forum in Shanghai. We enjoyed a hugely successful 23rd ICDE World Conference in Maastricht, and SCOP 2009 in Barcelona is now right around the corner. ICDE has also been working hard to raise the profile of open and distance education worldwide, through its engagement in work to promote open educational resources, and through its contributions to UNESCO’s World Conference on Higher Education. ICDE’s strategic plan has been published (see page 4), and the Secretariat has made huge advances in the development of its routines and procedures in order to guarantee exceptional service to our membership. The new ICDE website has been launched, and there are further online features in the pipeline (see page 4). Finally, on page 7, you can read about a number of exciting initiatives ICDE is looking forward to in 2010 and beyond.
Carl Holmberg Secretary General, ICDE
I would like to take this opportunity to thank ICDE’s Executive Committee and the ICDE membership for their engagement and contributions to our organization, and to thank our friends and partners for their interest and cooperation. We hope that you will enjoy reading ICDE Highlights, and as always are pleased for your feedback. With kind regards,
ICDE’s Executive Committee Frits Pannekoek, President, Athabasca University Tian Belawati, Rector, Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia Denise Kirkpatrick, Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning, Teaching and Quality, The Open University, UK Fredric Litto, President of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED) Marta Mena, General Coordinator of Electronics Training Program (PROCAE), Cabinet of Ministers, Argentine Government N Barney Pityana, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA)
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A groundbreaking 23rd ICDE World Conference The 23rd ICDE World Conference was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands in June 2009. Held jointly with the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities’ Annual Conference, the event was attended by over 500 participants from 70 nations. Host institution, OpenUniversiteit Nederland, really set the standard for future conferences by making the event accessible in real time to ICDE members and other interested parties across the globe. Keynote lectures including those by Brenda Gourley, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University UK, Barney Pityana, Vice-Chancellor of UNISA and Sam Pitroda, Chair of the National Knowledge Commission, India, were broadcast live through the Avacast system. Viewers were able to watch and listen to the speaker in addition to seeing the PowerPoint slides. The experience was thus as close to being in the conference hall as possible. The facility was most impressive when it came to the keynote panel debates moderated by John O’Brien of Athabasca University and formerly
The World Conference Fellowship programme
with CBC Newsworld, Canada. Viewers were not only able to view the action live, but also to submit questions to the panel, which were read out and discussed during the course of the debate. All previously broadcast material as well as keynote speaker interviews were made available for ‘watch again’ access immediately after the conference, and can be found in the Live Broadcast archive on the conference website. Outcomes The findings and recommendations of the World Conference were presented in the closing session and published on the website. These were also reported to the EDEN 2009 Annual Conference and delivered to the UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education. The Maastricht Message noted the need for governments, NGOs, notfor-profit interests and the corporate sector to mobilize their imagination and resources to create flexible, accessible, and quality learning at scale. But it provided a word of caution given challenges, including inadequate accessibility to ICT
Brenda Gourley infrastructure, questions over the sustainability, cultural appropriateness, quality and effective application of OERs, quality concerns, the issue of mobility of academic credentials, and the dilemma regarding the appropriate mix of public and private responsibilities for learning. Three additional statements were published as a result of the conference covering key areas in the programme; open educational resources, quality assurance in e-learning and distance education, and international development and open, distance and flexible learning. All are available to download from the conference website. Conference website: www.ou.nl/ icde2009
The 23rd ICDE World Conference Fellowship Programme was a tremendous success enabling 22 representatives from countries with developing economies to attend.
ICDE extends grateful thanks to them all:
Recipients came from Bangladesh, Botswana, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Uganda. The programme would not have been possible without support from member institutions and other organizations.
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Anadolu University, Turkey
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Athabasca University, Canada
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Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
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European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU)
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FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
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Open Universiteit, The Netherlands
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The Open Society Institute
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The Open University of Japan
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The Open University, United Kingdom
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Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
remain including the quality of learning offered through ICTs and the fact that Northern hemisphere material dominates leading to a lack of a real local trade in educational resources.
ICDE at the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education The UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education is held approximately every ten years at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. It is billed as an occasion for key stakeholders to make commitments to the development of higher education and agree on action-oriented recommendations to enable higher education and research to better respond to the growing demands of society.
“The 18 plus students demand ICTdriven learning and if this is not provided as an option, conventional institutes will lose them,” he warned. increasingly connected, and increasingly providing a global voice for minority languages and cultures through the Internet.
Ten years of development
“Content was not affordable, indigenous cultures were marginalized on the Internet and English was the dominant language“, he said. “Now the world is still not wired but it is increasingly wireless. ICTs [information and communication technologies] are still unfairly distributed worldwide but there are positive changes such as the invention of the 100 dollar computer. Indigenous cultures are fi nally on line and in Canada and New Zealand they have a strong presence.”
Frits Pannekoek spoke on developments over the past decade from a state of relative underdevelopment and digital inaccessibility, to a world
Dr. Pannekoek reported that although English has also lost some of its hold, with smaller languages asserting themselves, problem areas
ICDE President, Frits Pannekoek, President of Athabasca University Canada and ICDE Secretary General Carl Holmberg attended and took part in the debates, behind the scenes negotiations and formation of the final communiqué, supported by Bernard Loing, ICDE’s General Delegate at UNESCO.
Recognition for ODL The final communiqué was a victory for ICDE’s work to promote the crucial role that open and distance learning (ODL) will increasingly play in the global context. The communiqué states that new approaches such as ODL and ICTs are required to realize the goals of Education for All (EFA), and to address the worldwide shortage of teachers. It goes on to state that: “ODL approaches and ICTs present opportunities to widen access to quality education, particularly when Open Educational Resources are readily shared by many countries and higher education institutions. [...] The application of ICTs to teaching and learning has great potential to increase access, quality and success.” Source: www.unesco.org/en/ wche2009
Recognizing excellence For ten years it has been a tradition for world conferences to honour outstanding contributions to open and distance education, and the 23rd World Conference in Maastricht was no exception. Nominations and statements of support were invited from ICDE members, and the winners selected by an independent, international panel, based on merit alone with no political or cultural considerations being made. Asha Kanwar, Vice President of the Commonwealth of Learning received the ICDE Individual Prize of Excellence for her outstanding work in leading the creation of low cost technology options for delivering
education to the developing world. The Prize for Lifelong Contribution was meanwhile awarded to Gary E. Miller, former Associate VicePresident for Outreach at the Pennsylvania State University, and founding Executive Director of Penn State World Campus, one of the first global distance university programmes.
Zhang Deming, President of STVU; Nick Allen, accepting on behalf of Gary E. Miller; Asha Kanwar; Fred Nickolmann technologies to reach diverse sections of society.
The ICDE Institutional Prize of Excellence was presented to Shanghai TV University in recognition of its work in using broadcast and digital
A further presentation was made to Fred Nickolmann of FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, for many years of service to ICDE.
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New website for ICDE ICDE were proud to launch their new website this year. The look has changed, and it is designed to be both more user-friendly and easier to navigate around. Information about ICDE’s aims, structure and activities can be found under the About link, while ICDE members may log in to the Extranet to view membership lists and other internal documentation. The majority of the website is, however, given over to three specific sections: The Forum will be both a virtual meeting place and a source for information about physical meetings. It includes a global conference
ICDE’s strategic plan During 2008, ICDE commissioned an Environmental Scan to examine the key global trends in higher education, adult education and distance learning. This document, together with discussions with member institutions at the Commonwealth of Learning conference in London in July 2008, and at the SCOP meeting in Shanghai in October 2008, provided ICDE with a framework within which its strategic plan could be developed. The strategic plan has now been published, and its key points are as follows: 1. ICDE shall be the global arena for the discussion of distance education policies. 2. ICDE shall promote quality in distance, flexible and ICT-based education, and work for the achievement of a global
calendar with an overview of physical meetings, while a message board will shortly be launched allowing users to seek advice, enter into debates and take part in subject specific fora. There will also be a facility for posting news from institutions and research projects directly on the website. Context, meanwhile, is a section designed to provide information on the key international actors in open and distance education, both regionally, nationally and at
understanding of quality within distance education. 3. ICDE will contribute to the development of new methodologies and technologies, through the dissemination of information, supporting efforts to find solutions for countries with developing economies, and through working to increase awareness of the digital divide and steps taken to minimize the divide. 4. ICDE will foster cooperation between members, leading to significant increases in cooperation between national and regional organizations, and greater opportunities for collaboration between institutions in the northern and southern hemispheres. The ICDE Secretariat’s activity plan for 2009–2012 is published in combination with the strategic plan. ICDE’s strategic plan: www.icde.org/ en/about/mission/
institutional level, while through Resources, website users are able to link to information on important publications; journals, handbooks and reports, as well as papers and abstracts from ICDE conferences. A new Chinese version of the website will also be launched over the coming months. The ICDE website: www.icde.org
New member of Executive Committee
A new member of the ICDE Executive Committee was co-opted at the Executive Committee meeting held in June in Maastricht. Tian Belawati, newly appointed Rector of Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia brings considerable experience of international partnership to ICDE, through the outstanding work of Universitas Terbuka and through her active participation in the Asian Association of Open Universities, where she is currently President. Professor Belawati will sit on the Executive Committee for the remainder of the 2008-2011 term of office in the position vacated by Paul Grimwood who retired from the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand earlier in 2009. The vacant position on the ICDE Election Committee will be filled by Helmut Hoyer, Rector of FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.
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conference in which ICDE was a collaborating organization.
Standing Conference of Presidents in Shanghai SCOP 2008 was hosted by Shanghai TV University and featured several exciting keynote speeches. Ge Daokai, President of China Central Radio and TV University spoke on the management of mega-universities, while Don Olcott, Jr, CEO of The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education presented on the challenges and perspectives of borderless higher education. Bernard Loing, ICDE’s General Delegate at UNESCO spoke on the
Study Tour to China and reciprocal visit by CCRTVU
regulatory climate affecting distance learning. Over seventy Presidents, ViceChancellors and other senior officers of open and distance teaching universities attended. The meeting was followed immediately by the UNESCO Global Forum on Open and Distance Education, an open academic
ICDE receives a significant part of its funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and has a commitment to offer Norwegian distance education institutions opportunities for international discourse. In this regard, ICDE arranged for 17 representatives of Norwegian institutions to undertake a study tour to China in late 2008. The tour began with the 2008 SCOP meeting in Shanghai, and was followed by visits to selected institutions in other parts of the country including Shanghai TV University, China Central Radio and TV University, Tshingua University Beijing and the National Examination Education Authority in Beijing.
International Conference in the Dominican Republic The University of the Caribbean (UNICARIBE) were hosts for an ICDE International Conference in the Dominican Republic in November 2008 which attracted approximately 380 participants from the region and beyond. The country is one of only a few in Latin American where distance education has been practised
extensively since the 1980s. The country prides itself on its commitment to providing learning opportunities to all Dominicans and learners throughout the region through ODL. The theme of the conference was The Current Challenges of Virtuality, and dealt with distance education as an element of social inclusion and civic participation, research and development in distance education, and construction and knowledge management through distance education. International conferences are ICDE’s response to regional needs for
The Forum focused both on the historic opportunity provided by economic globalization and the emergence of knowledge economies and internationalization of higher education, but also on the challenges to individuals, groups and communities lacking the preparation to face them. The event attracted more than 400 participants from 47 different countries. 122 institutions and organizations were represented by policy-makers and executives, education specialists and researchers, as well as practitioners in the field of ODL.
Norwegian institutions were able to showcase the Norwegian tradition within distance education while sharing experiences with their Chinese colleagues. ICDE collaborated closely with Norway Opening Universities, the Norwegian Association for Distance Education, and ICDE members in Norway on this initiative. In August 2009, a delegation from China Central Radio and TV University (CCRTVU) made a return visit to Norway. The delegation, led by Ruan Zhiyong, Vice President of CCRTVU visited distance education institutions in Oslo and Tromso in Norway, and also travelled to Stockholm in Sweden.
collaborative platforms, and this particular conference allowed Latin American professionals to interact with their peers in other regions using their own language, with simultaneous translation to English, Spanish and Portuguese. The main speakers were Lalita Rajasingham of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Michel Moore of Pennsylvania State University, USA, Imma Tubella Rector of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain, and ICDE President Frits Pannekoek, President of Athabasca University, Canada.
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Books on Distance Education Two titles with ICDE involvement have been published during the past year. The book, Best Practices in Distance Education in China is based on ICDE papers and published material from recent years. ICDE was represented on the Editorial Committee with responsibility for the revision and selection of material, contacts with authors and proofreading. The book was launched in conjunction with the SCOP meeting held in Shanghai and is available in both English and Chinese versions. A Spanish language title, Regulatory Framework for Distance Education Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean was compiled by Executive Committee member Marta Mena, Claudio Rama, and Angel Facundo. The book was published in Bogotá by Universidad National Abierta, with sponsorship from the University, ICDE and VIRTUAL EDUCA. It contains contributions from 26 experts and features research on, and comparative studies of 15 countries in the region.
Open Educational Resources Task Force report A mammoth effort by a distinguished panel of experts on open educational resources led by Fred Mulder of Open Universiteit in the Netherlands culminated in the publication of their report at the end of 2008. The report makes a series of recommendations to ICDE, including a call for the organization to concentrate its future work on OER on the self-study and learner-centred approach to materials. The authors also asked that ICDE works to draw attention to issues including quality assurance, sustainability, adaptation to language and culture, content and services, and IPR and copyright. The Task Force further recommended that ICDE works to stimulate collaboration and to raise awareness, and to mobilize political resonance and media exposure using the ICDE brand. Many of these calls are to be followed up as a part of the forthcoming Open Educational Quality Initiative (see opposite page).
New members Open Praxis Open Praxis, ICDE’s online journal continues to be published biannually. The first issue of 2009 included four papers from the 2008 SCOP meeting together with the 13 keynote papers from the UNESCO Global Forum on Open and Distance Education. The second issue of 2009 will be published in December.
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ICDE has welcomed 15 new institutional members as well as nine new individual members to its ranks over the past twelve months. New member institutions are invited to submit an introductory profile for publication on the entry page to the ICDE website. Most recent profiles have included those for Cengage Education, Australia; Wawasan Open University, Malaysia; the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute, USA and MKFC Stockholm College, Sweden.
Presence at third party conferences ICDE’s Executive Committee and Secretary General are frequently invited to provide ICDE input at third party conferences. ICDE will normally ask that the hosting institution or the Executive Committee member’s own institution funds their participation. Over the past twelve months, conferences where ICDE has been represented have included: •
ONLINE EDUCA, December 2008
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Nordic Council Meeting, December 2008
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31st Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization High Officials Meeting, January 2009
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UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education, June 2009
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European Distance and E-learning Network 2009 Annual Conference, June 2009
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European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning 2nd International Forum, September 2009
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The 15th CIED – Brazilian International Congress of Distance Education, September 2009
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Conference to mark Sweden’s Presidency of the European Union, October 2009
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European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education Workshop, October 2009
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International Forum on Open and Distance Education hosted by China Central Radio and TV University and China Distance Education Society, October 2009
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23rd Asian Association of Open Universities Annual Conference, November 2009
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8th International ILIAS Open Source Conference, November 2009
Coming soon
The Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL) will focus on the provision of innovative open educational practices, both in higher education and adult education, and promote quality, innovation and transparency in this process.
The OPAL Initiative will move beyond the issue of access to open educational resources (OER), and focus on innovation and quality through open educational practices (OEP). Existing approaches for fostering the use of OER have made achievements by focusing on building access to resources (MERLOT, MIT OCW, Stanford iTunes, Openlearn, Rice University, the UNESCO Open Training Platform, the UNESCO OER wiki) and licence models (Creative Commons). However, concerns over quality, the absence of trust on the part of learners and educators, and a lacking sense of ownership of the materials hinder wider acceptance of OER. OPAL will seek to build trust by establishing an environment for quality and Innovation through OEP.
This two-year project is a partnership between seven organizations including ICDE, UNESCO and ICDE member institution, the Open University UK. It is to be coordinated by the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and is part funded by the European Commission Education and Training Lifelong Learning Programme.
OPAL will work to build a multistakeholder environment in order to root quality and innovation in a broad consensus, combine activities and provide an interface for international initiatives which will promote OEP on a sustainable level. The project will address both higher education and adult education, bring stakeholders from each sectors’
The Open Educational Quality Initiative With ICDE’s new strategic plan and key objective to promote quality, and the ICDE Task Force on Open Educational Resources’ recommendations fresh in our minds, ICDE is pleased to announce our involvement in the Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL).
Online seminars It is ICDE’s objective to be the global arena for the discussion of distance education policies, and our aim to make the ICDE website a key feature of this strategy. ICDE will in 2010 launch a series of policy-related seminars using web streaming technology to allow for live presentations, instant feedback and questions, and archiving of the seminars for future viewing. Online seminars will be advertised from early 2010.
governance community together, and promote OEP in both sectors so that learners may benefit from continuity when moving between university and adult education. ICDE will be heavily involved in two particular areas of the project; the establishment and awarding of the OEP Innovation Award to recognize outstanding achievements in the field of OEP, and dissemination and exploitation of the results of the project through targeted conferences, papers and presentations, and workshops and seminars. The nature of the funding of the project means that it will focus on the European context, though the involvement of ICDE and UNESCO underlines the project’s strategy of connecting European organizations to international debate, and making the EU a lighthouse region for OEP. In this regard, ICDE commits to disseminate updates from, and findings of the project to its membership with a view to providing other regions of the world with input to their work on promoting innovative open educational practices.
24th ICDE World Conference in 2011 ICDE are delighted to announce that Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia will be hosts for the 24th ICDE World Conference, to be held 2-5 October 2011 in Bali, Indonesia. It is only the 4th time that the biennial world conference will be held in Asia, after India in 1978, Thailand in 1992 and China in 2004. We look forward to a high quality programme, and are confident that Bali will be an attractive destination both for open and distance education professionals from Asian and Australasian countries, because of its proximity, and indeed for the rest of the world given the beauty of the island and warm hospitality of the Indonesian people.
SCOP returns to Africa Preparations for the ICDE 2009 Standing Conference of Presidents hosted by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain are well underway with over 70 senior executives of open and distance teaching universities set to attend. Looking forward to next year, ICDE are pleased to announce that the University of South Africa will host the 2010 SCOP meeting. SCOP was last in Africa in 2002. Dates and further details will be published in early 2010.
Conference website: www.ut.ac.id/ icde2011
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INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATION
ICDE’s members play a leading role in shaping the future of education worldwide
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Picture credits: pages 2&3 – Open Universiteit Nederland; page 4 – Universitas Terbuka; page 5 – Shanghai TV University
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