Week 7: Distance learning: China

China is a biiiiiiiiig nation, and not just big in size, but it is the enormous population of the country that originally called for the need for distance learning platforms in the "now-sort-of-former-communist" country.

In (traditionally capitalist) country's like Australia the distance learning phenomenon had already been widely adopted due to its relatively small population being spread out over quite a large island. Therefore people were not always able to get their children educated in the traditional school-going way.

In the 1960's China adopted a similar system to solve their own problem of having TOO MANY students to educate in the traditional way, but by using distance learning principles on platforms such as radio, television and "microwave" (in the out-of-the-kitchen-sense) it wa spossible to reach a large proportion of the population without having to build traditional schools/universities, thus keeping costs down whilst not compromising on the amount of people being educated. The Television Universities are funded by the State Education Commission and the quite steep tuition fees of the university. Later the broadcasted lectures became also available on audio and video tape and printed material, such as course books and study guides became available.



Over the years these Television Universities have proven to be moderately succesful educational institutions indeed with a range of 150 different undergraduate courses and over half a a million students graduating in th e last 8 years alone. However, I guess it needs pointing out that over 1.2 million people had enrolled in the same timespan, which means that less than half of all students who enrol actually finish their course.



I have a few issues with this educational system, though.



For one thing, not only do a BIG group of people receive exactly the same information in exactly the same way from exactly the same person, maybe not so muhc a problem in communist China, but still, but also is there no ability for students to question what is being taught. In a traditional learning environment there is quite usually a way for students to ask a lecturer "why" this is what they are being taught and are quite often encouraged to give their own ideas and opinions about an issue, after which a lecturer might even admit that the student "has a point" (even if it is quite often followed by "But,..."). If, for a television uni student the only platform they have to give their OWN opinion on something is in their actual assessment they might not feel comfortable enough to be (somewhat) alternative in the way they address issues and just write safer not-quite-as-ground-breaking (?) work instead.



Lateron, the ongoing crtisisism abotu this resulted in the Television University now offering the availability of face to face tutorials, which is all good and all, but it does mean that two of the main advantages of distance learning. One being the cost-saving of needing physical locations for tuitions and secondly availability for all as some of the students simply would not be able to attend a face-to-face tuition. This way not all students can receive the same level of tuition. Avilability for all is a bit of a weird concept to use in a country like China anyway, where wealth isn't exactly wide-spread and the courses given by the Television Uni's aren't exactly cheap. So basically University is still as elitist in China as it is in many other countries.

Week 7: Distance learning: The LOI (The Netherlands)

The LOI (Leidse Onderwijs Instellingen > Leiden-based Educational Institutions) is a privately owned educational institute providing distant-learning only. I feel it needs pointing out that the city of Leiden is home of the prestigious Univerity of Leiden (www.leiden.edu) and that therefore the name of the city is usually associated with higher education. The LOI always put great emphasis on the fact that they're from Leiden in their promotional campaigns, however, the LOI have nothing to do with the university, which is one of the oldest universities in the country.

The origins of the LOI lie within the city's "Institute of Trade Sciences". In 1923 this institute started doing their first (postal) distance-learning programme: a course in book-keeping. Ove the years the the institute has started running several other courses and in 1941 (So, surprisingly, in war time) the institute teamed up with a number of Leiden-based colleges to run distant-learning courses on their behalf, all under the LOI-banner.

In 1953 the LOI started providing audio-based language courses (on good old fashioned casettes) and in 1988 the LOI started experimenting with something called "digimail", a computer-based form of distance-learning, the technology of which seemed to be quite similar to what we would later become familiar with under the name E-mail. In 1996 the LOI introduced what they called the "LOI campus", an online, web-based learning environment. Originally the campus provided only written lectures, later video-lectures (some also streamed live) and downloadable audio-lectures became available. Since 2001 most of the courses are almost completely web-based with lectures ebing given through audio, video and text, seminars taking place in forums and online audio/video conferences and most assessments being submitted online. The LOI provides students with their own personal tutor (or I-coahc, as they like to call them) with whom they keep in contact through both email as well as instant messenging.


In 2002 the LOI started doing a small number of full university degrees, completely through distance learning, which up until then these were only provided by the Open Universiteit (Obviously the Dutch equivalent of the Open Univerity). The two however are not really in competition though, as these two distant-learning giants provide different degree courses. The reason for this is probably because the LOI would find it hard to compete with the lower tuition fees of the government funded Open Universiteit. Nonetheless, the LOI-brand has pretty much become synonym with distance-learning in the Netherlands and some of the open university's online services are clearly inspired by the LOI's online campus.