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Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 1 / 12

Survey of ICT in Swiss higher education by honorary prof. Bernard Levrat University of Geneva President of the Swiss Virtual Campus Commission

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 2 / 12

• A few words about Switzerland

➥ cantonal vs. federal policies in higher education

• Use of ICT in education: the pioneers
• Special measures for ICT in education

➥ Swiss Virtual Campus Program ➥ involving cooperation among existing universities ➥ aiming at re-thinking some courses to deliver them through Internet ➥ letting students take these courses for credit. ➥ digital libraries consortium

• The situation today

➥ 50 projects approaching completion

• Current worries:

➥ sustainability ➥ recognition of new professional careers.

plan of presentation

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 3 / 12

Geography and infrastructure of Switzerland

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➥ Switzerland is a federation of 23 sovereign states ➥ education is left to cantons - a price for cultural and religious diversity ➥ some of the cantons (Basel, Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Zurich)

support universities several centuries old. There are also new ones.

➥ the federal government maintains 2 Federal Institutes of Technology (FIT) ➥ because of the rising costs of higher education, the federal government

had to step in with subsidies and special programs - not to mention the swiss national fund for research (SNF) started in 1952.

➥ rising costs call for more cooperation among FITs and Universities ➥ quite recently, a number of technical and administration schools were

• rganized in a network of 7 Universities of Applied Sciences.

cantonal vs. federal policies in higher education

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It may surprise some of you, but there have been many projects to use computers in education before Internet.

➥ In 1981, I chaired the 3rd WCCE in Lausanne. I learned a lot from

following the successes and failures of participants who became friends

➥ Closer to us, the following 4 projects are significant ➥ Telepoly from the FITs, high-tech synchronous distance teaching ➥ NET from ETHZ with technical and pedagogical consulting and

support activities for projects in the FIT and ZH University.

➥ TECFA, a special unit of the Faculty of Psychology and Education

Sciences of the University of Geneva created to innovate in the field

• f educational technology. Since 1994, it offers a postgraduate degree

(STAF) combining face-to-face and distance learning.

➥ Ariadne (EPFL and University of Lausanne), a European project

which, I hope, will be discussed in more details in the Conference.

ICT in education: the pioneers

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 6 / 12

➥ Every 4 years, the Swiss Federal Government proposes to Parliament a

budget for education which includes some special measures to encourage development of new domains of activities. Prior to 2000, we had, among

• thers, special measures for informatics to improve network infrastructure

and acquire workstations and, for lifelong learning.

➥ In 2000-2004, two items were devoted to ICT ➥ creation of a Swiss Virtual Campus, following a report by a group that

I chaired called "Formation Universitaire et Nouvelles Technologies".

➥ financing a digital libraries consortium, giving every member of

higher learning institutions access to most of the on-line journals and commonly used databases1 1. In my opinion, education still has to learn how to make use of such unlimited free access

Special measures for ICT in education

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 7 / 12

• A total sum of SFr 30 millions (EUR 19.6 millions) was appropriated for the

program in the period 2000-2003

➥ 5 millions for administration, expertise, infrastructure ➥ 25 millions entirely devoted to projects

• Matching funds (or equivalent resources) must be given to the projects by

their home institutions.

• Every project must involve at least three institutions (leader and partners)

who pledge they will let their students use the material after an appropriate evaluation.

• A public call for participation produced 155 letters of intent by September
• 1999. 27 were accepted by an international group of experts and started in

July 2000.

• A second series produced 58 proposals: 22 were accepted an started in July

2001.

The Swiss Virtual Campus program

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• A project group is:

➥ teachers of the same discipline agreeing on the pedagogical

• bjectives to be achieved by a SVC course

➥ and a group higher education establishments accepting that this

course, once operational, can be used by students to gain ECTS credits

• a crucial difference with just offering IT supporting materials.

➥ and at least one teaching and research unit which is part of the

partnership accepting the responsibility of leading the project to a successful end.

cooperation among institutions

I believe similar groups should be encouraged

• internationally. Scientists share, criticize and

duplicate their research methods, Why not do the same with learning materials?

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 9 / 12

• An international Steering Committee chaired by Prof. P. Stucki (uni Zürich)

has the task of conducting the project. it used the following selection criteria

➥ quality of institutional network; ➥ pedagogical objectives; ➥ integration of e-courseware ➥ support from home institutions ➥ selection of tools ➥ number of students ➥ interactivity ➥ innovation and working plan ➥ multi-language support

• Technical (http://www.edutech.ch) and methodological support

(IntersTICES http://tecfa.unige.ch/proj/cvs/ and eQuality http://www.equality.unizh.ch/) are available to all projects

re-thinking course contents

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• The SVC program has raised the level of awareness of higher education

authorities (from nice words to real budgets)

• Centers of competence (pedagogical design, programming, evaluation) have

been created in a number of institutions. They will be supported in the 2004- 2007 period.

• Some places, notably the canton of Zurich and ETHZ have gone further, pro-

viding their own funding to a large number of projects.

• Tele-teaching and tele-presence are developing fast. Geneva has a number of

projects with developing countries, several involving special subjects in med-

• icine. These technologies may be quite useful for tutoring.
• Last, but not least, our 50 projects are nearing completion with good pros-

pects of meeting their goals, but they still have to take the ultimate test of being taken for credit at a distance. (visit http://www.virtualcampus.ch).

• Students expressed their interest, but they want to add material to face-to-

face courses rather than replace them.

the situation today

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• The justification of the program is to demonstrate that courses delivered

through Internet, with appropriate local or on-line tutoring, can be offered for credit in more than one institution.

• We hope that the results of cooperative pedagogical design, careful develop-

ment strategies and testing will fulfill this goal.

• Success will be measured by the willingness of the different institutions to

setup a long term structure to maintain existing material and develop new

• ne with the possible end of federal subsidies in mind.
• The basis of the new organization will be established in the 2004-2007

period

• There is a need for new job definitions and profiles. People developing and

maintaining quality e-learning materials should achieve recognition and career paths similar to librarians, or they will go elsewhere.

current worries

Rotterdam, September 4th, 2002 The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education Bernard Levrat 12 / 12

• The paper - not the presentation - was prepared on-line with contributions

from the correspondents of the program from all participating institutions. They are:

➥ Gudrun Bachmann (Universität Basel), ➥ Gerald Collaud (Fribourg University), ➥ Pierre Dillengourg (TECFA)

Martina Dittler (Universität Basel),

➥ Ronald Greber (Universität Bern), Bengt Kayser (University of Geneva), ➥ Chandra Holm (UAS Solothurn),

Elaine.McMurray(EPFL),

➥ Benedetto Lepori (Università della Svizzera italiana), ➥ Eva Seiler Schiedt (Universität Zürich), Christian Sengstag (ETHZ) ➥ Jacques Viens (TECFA) ➥ with a special mention to Jacques Monnard (Edutech) and to ➥ Cornelia Rizek-Pfister (coordinator of the Swiss Virtual Campus Program)

acknowledgements