HUMANE
SEMINAR
Universiteit
Utrecht
Friday 12 to
Saturday 13 October 2001
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Students of today arrive fully conversant in the on-line world, and with this comes a heightened expectation for immediacy and self-sufficiency. The choice, booking and purchase of airline flights is now independent of travel agents, so why not the selection, registration and purchase of tuition? Insurance and banking can be transacted via post, call centres, e-mail and the internet without the need for face to face contact, so why not student enquiries and the maintenance of registration (account) details?
LSE for You is an institutional portal for students and staff to access and
maintain personalised data from the LSE's corporate systems. All users of the
LSE's network have access via their standard username and password and efforts
are being made to expand this user community to include student applicants and
alumni.
LSE for You opens up the data which the institution holds about an individual for
their own scrutiny and amendment, thus providing transparency and improved accuracy.
It provides 24/7[1] access from
anywhere in the world without having to queue, and it removes large amounts of
institutional data entry, thus reducing costs. LSE for You also provides the potential for more centralisation,
data sharing and integration, economies of scale and process automation.
The International Economics
and Business Programme
In September 2000 the
Faculty of Economics started a new full-time, four-year programme in International
Economics and Business, delivered in English. This IE&B programme targets
both Dutch and international students and all courses and materials are in
English. The basic curriculum varies little from the regular four-year degree
programme in Dutch, but the instructional format differs. The IE&B
programme has been set up according the ideas of Small Group Teaching (SGT).
SGT offers ample opportunities to practice social skills, introduce larger
problems and integrate different disciplines. The set-up comprises two
small-group meetings per week in which the material of the teaching cycle is
integrated through a series of assignments.
Both programmes, IE&B
and the regular programme, have been evaluated every term (trimester). The
results of these evaluations and comparisons will be presented at the HUMANE
seminar.
Utrecht University has in
recent years set up a system for the systematic monitoring of facts and
feelings among important groups of people related to the university. The
monitoring deals, among other things, with secondary school pupils, students
(first and third years), alumni (one and three years after graduation, on
labour market position, plus focus groups), and staff. These groups are
interviewed, and the results are combined with databases held within the
university. In this way profiles of groups of relations of Utrecht University
can be detected and developed, while policies based on empirical data can be
developed in things like educational marketing, alumni or human resources.
The presentation will focus
on the aims, execution, and results of these monitoring studies, and on the
process of introduction within the university. Examples will be given of the
use of results in the strategic programme of the university (enrolment
marketing, human resources) with a focus on a specific approach in enhancing
the quality of educational facilities.
The presentation will be
given by Joop Kessels, director of corporate communications. Joop Kessels was
involved in the introduction of the monitoring system.
Experience from the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
The presentation will deal
with the following key points:
Internet
·
Our
active use of the Internet in the recruitment of students/student information
·
Use
of the Internet to register for courses and examinations
·
Use
of the Intranet for student information and contact
·
Planned
use of the Intranet for notification of examination results
Student service centre
·
Wide
use of ICT[2]
for virtual information about studies, counselling and advice
·
One-stop
centres on our main campuses
·
Use
of ICT in teaching, both for degree courses and in continuing and further
education
· Cooperation with partner universities in joint degree courses or in continuing and further education where ICT is a central tool
Internationalisation
·
Web-based
application procedures for students planning exchanges/mobility/placements in
programmes such as Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci. Directly linked to databases
and administrative processing. Procedures for incoming and outgoing students.
Students and New Technologies
The university’s experience will be described in a presentation divided
into four parts:
1 A description of the
university
The
problems of student access:
·
Large
increases in the early nineties, with reverse effects at the end of the decade
(disaffection with scientific studies, demographic trends, and pedagogical
orientation)
2 Information about
studies in Lille 1:
·
Operations towards second degree “sciences en
fête” or “physique itinérante”
·
The university’s presentation on the web
3 Enrolment or Registration:
·
A sudden rise in the number of foreign students
·
The Web solution: on-line (Web) registration,
credit cards payments
·
Continuous education (lifelong learning):
access for non-standard students
4 Student services:
·
Internet access within the university
·
Creation of Resource centres
·
The “emplois-jeunes”
recruitment plan
·
The definition of other services to students
Globalised Access: E-learning
Online
David Allen, University of Birmingham
This presentation will look
at some of the academic and technical issues which arise from 'e-learning'.
While the particular focus will be on one global consortium and its involvement
with a commercial company in a joint venture, other initiatives (such as the
e-University in the UK and UNext) will be examined.
Issues to be covered will
include:
·
content
creation and ownership
·
quality
control
·
7/24
student support
·
the
longer-term benefits (or disbenefits) to an institution participating in
e-learning.
University Students in Flanders: a Case Study
From 1989 education policy in Belgium became the responsibility of each
of the three ‘communities’ of the country.
This case study deals with the situation in Flanders.
The so-called ‘Flemish community’ has about 6 million (Dutch-speaking)
inhabitants. Maximal student access to higher education is a traditional
priority and is considered to be part of ‘democracy’. Registration fees are low
(less than 500 euros per year) and students whose parents have low income pay
even less.
In the case study the following topics will be
presented:
·
Participation of students
in the boards of the faculties and the university
·
Student organisations
·
Particular student
support by the university
·
Non-regular students, for
example students who have a full-time job outside the university
·
Student access barriers
·
Student failure-rates