Beijing Foreign Studies University

Since my previous posting was about e-China, I thought I would mention Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), which is a very prestigious university in China founded in 1941. It is well known for its foreign language programs in addition to training in foreign relations, foreign trade, foreign culture, and teaching. It has produced so many members of the Chinese foreign service that is known as "the cradle of diplomats."

In July 2000, the Ministry of Education (MOE) designated BFSU as an experimental university of modern distance education, and in December of that year the Institute of Online Education, BFSU, was formally established. The institute has established a close partnership with Beijing Pacific Century Info-Tech Co., Ltd. (BPC) to develop their online education platform.

The institute features a modular system, in which the modules vary according to the certificate or diploma, and the curricula vary according to the modules. The institute offers bachelor's degrees in English language and master's degrees in English Language Teaching (ELT).

The institute strives to become the largest online foreign language university in China. With China's entry into the WTO and a population well over a billion, the market for English language study in China is vast. Couple this with the fact that there are over 110 million Internet users in China and counting, means that this institute will have a large pool of potential students to draw from.

e-China

Seeing Carlton Robinson's blog on international trends in distance education inspired me to investigate what is going on in China. I stumbled on an article on the China Radio International english website titled Virtual Academia Forges Closer Links with China.

The article suggests that while students in the UK are already starting to take less expensive degree courses at universities in the US via the Internet, many may soon start considering Chinese universities as a viable alternative. Chinese universities for their part are eager to open their doors to foreign students and there is a new project titled e-China that is a collaboration between the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) and the Chinese Ministry of Education. The project was launched in March 2003 and has so far consisted of three pilot projects and four online joint ventures between Chinese and UK universities.

There are some cultural and technical barriers that have to be overcome. For example, there needs to be training on effective communication with mixed nationality cohort groups. There are also some technical problems and intellectual property issues that have to be ironed out with face to face meetings. The main goal of the program is to cooperate on design and commercial exploitation of online distance learning in both countries.

There are already 68 Chinese universities providing distance learning, but for the most part this is mainly within China itself, so many of these institutions want to develop revenue streams with foreign institutions. Tsinghua University and Beijing Foreign Studies University are two lead institutions that are cooperating with the UK, the later of which now offers masters level programs online. Beijing Foreign Studies University alone already has 30,000 distance learning students across China.

The e-China project has built a link between the UK higher education grid Janet and it's Chinese equivalent Cernet. However, due to bandwidth problems with Cernet, this is not the main platform. Most courses are designed to be hosted locally in China, and many e-China courses are designed to be operated on Moodle.

Thusfar, the exchange has demonstrated a fundamental difference between the approach to distance learning in the UK and China. In the UK, distance learning technology is seen as a way to increase participation and interaction between students and teachers. Whereas in China, it is seen as a way to deliver video lectures across vast distances to reach more remote areas.

The University of Georgia

Another outstanding institution in the field of distance learning is the University of Georgia based in Athens, Georgia with an enrollment of 32,000 students. It is routinely ranked as one of the top public universities in the country. The university offers a number of online programs including a master's degree in Adult Education, Special Education training, the Terry Executive MBA Program, and a wide variety of continuing education programs.

The university was an early forerunner of Web-based instruction adopting WebCT way back in 1997, and it quickly became one of the largest users of WebCT in the world. By 2000, the usage of WebCT became so extensive at the university that it was one of the few institutions to be designated as a WebCT Institution, meaning that it served as a regional outreach center for faculty training and support for WebCT.

The University of Georgia as well as the University of West Georgia are part of the University System of Georgia colleges and universities that offer over 100 programs. These programs are available from a variety of institutions within the system where at least 50 percent of a degree is available via distance learning technologies [online, video conferencing (GSAMS), video cassette, telecourse, satellite]. This includes collaborative eCore, WebMBA, WeBSIT, and WebBAS programs.

Nova Southeastern University

I am creating this blog for an assignment for the Distance Learning Certificate Program at the University of West Georgia. In the coming days I am going to post information on institutions that stand out above the rest in the field of distance education.

The first institution whose distance program I believe stands out above the rest is Nova Southeastern University http://www.nova.edu, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is the 7th largest independent, not-for-profit institution nationwide. It offers several undergraduate and graduate degree programs through distance education delivery systems in subjects such as business, health, computer science, education, optometry, law, pharmacy, and psychology. The course management system used to deliver their online courses is WebCT CE version 4.1.

A professor at Nova, Dr. Yair Levy, gave a presentation at the 2005 WebCT Impact conference in San Francisco about a doctoral program in computer information systems at Nova's Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences (GSCIS) that is offered almost entirely through WebCT. Dr. Levy has also recently authored a book titled Assessing the Value of E-Learning Systems.