Centro de Estudos a Distância - CED, Cordoba, Argentina

CISAER FINAL REPORT

Chapter 7

Evaluation of the use of the web for educational proposes in Southern Europe and Latin America

In this chapter institutions from Southern Europe and Latin America, offering courses on the WWW are evaluated from the point of view of an EU Vocational Education and Training (VET).

This evaluation highlights important topics that need to be addressed, namely the quantity and quality of the provision and the type of online education support structures available.

The topics addressed are:

Online Education and Training
The e-world
Research methodology
Southern Europe overview
Latin America overview
Conclusions
Recommendations to EU Decision Makers

1 - Online education and training

The continuous growth of new information technology tools are pushing up global policies and increasing the concern about the changes occurring in the Education and Training fields.

UNESCO has released its 1998 World Education Report, which warns that the "world’s 57 million teachers lack the resources and support they need to work effectively".

The 178-page report indicates that, as the outlines of our future "knowledge -based" society are forming, the majority of the school buildings, even in the most developed countries, are not equipped to integrate the new information and communication technologies.

Despite present obstacles, the Report emphasises that the new technologies - personal computers and the internet/world wide web - will inevitably transform traditional schooling, both in nature and in the type of learning materials available to students and teaching methods and approaches.

In the last years Europe made massive investments in the Education and Training sector. Research and Development projects were supported under programmes such as Telematics Application Programme, Advanced Communications Technologies & Services (ACTS) and Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER). Validation and demonstration projects were supported under the framework of Info 2000 and Ten Telecom. Mass Deployment projects were supported under Media programme, Leonardo da Vinci and Socrates.

In this same sense, DGXIII announced in 1998 a Memorandum of Understanding: Multimedia Access to Education and Training in Europe.

CEDEFOP - the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, set up the first European Electronic Training Village, a site dedicated to bringing together experts in the field of Vocational Training.

The recently created European Open and Distance Learning Liaison Committee (1999) develops co-operation between different European networks in order to promote and enrich the activities of each organisation and through this, enhance the development of open and distance learning.

The European ODL Liaison Committee announces that "the committee brings together a sufficient number of members to be considered as representative for the area and for the countries of the European Union and, increasingly, for countries of Central and Eastern Europe."

The founder members of the Liaison Committee are:

Association of European Correspondence Schools (AECS),
Coimbra Group,
EuroPACE 2000,
European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU),
European Distance Education Network (EDEN),
European Federation for Open and Distance Learning (E.F.ODL),
European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN),
International Council for Open and Distance Education - Europe (ICDE-Europe)
Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP).

Other initiatives are going on at the European Member States level.

In Portugal, for instance, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), has set-up a managing structure that implements the National Policies in the field (Information Society Task Force), based on the "Green Book for Information Society in Portugal" edited in 1997. UARTE (Educational Telematic Support Network), is another body created by MCT to support the Internet programme in Schools, which integrates 1,1 million students and 1600 Schools.

On the other hand, the NÓNIO XXI Century Programme, created in the context of the Ministry of Education, is the Programme for Information and Communication Technologies in Education, which aims to produce and develop applications and widen the use of information and communication technologies in the educational system.

In a way, it is fair to say that there is a considerable amount of European thinking on those issues, especially due to the variety and quantity of pilot projects approved by European and national bodies in this field.

The problem is the lack of European and national level data, reporting the actual field situation in respect to online education provision (courses, addresses, costs, type of certification, pedagogical approach, etc).

In particular, in Southern Europe the offer of online education is very poor when compared with other parts of the globe.

In fact, the CISAER catalogue 1999 contains 130 entries from all over the world and from those entries only 6,5% of the Courses were offered by Southern European institutions.

2 - The e-world

In the 19^th Century, the industrial revolution structured society into centres of mass production. In the 20^th Century, the distance revolution promoted the creation of networks, travelling, energetic, telecommunications, radio, TV, information networks. In the 21^st Century, the information revolution promotes an omnipresent society of services.

The evolution of communication, which allows a greater proximity between all of the world’s inhabitants, stimulates the appearance of services that are rendered locally by companies located in distinct areas of the world.

The emerging "e" world becomes a reality. Nowadays, we use e-mail, e marketing, e-commerce, e-business and e-learning.

Besides, the White Book on "The Growth, Competition and Employment", launched in 1994 by the European Commission, focus on the changes introduced by the Information Society:

Economical changes (globalisation of the markets, global competition, reorientation of competitiveness),

Labour changes (new working methods, Tele-work, new jobs) and

Behavioural changes (new ways of learning, going from education environments to learning environments, distance learning).

The White Book "Teaching and Learning Towards a Cognitive Society", edited in 1995 by the European Commission, describes the three economical engines responsible for development:

the globalisation of exchanges,

the advent of the information society and

the acceleration of the scientific and technological revolution.

This reinforces the fundamental idea that, "the position of each individual in society will be determined by the knowledge and skills that he/she has acquired". Targeting the society of the future - a society that knows how to invest in intelligence, a teaching and learning society, where each person can learn to construct his/her own qualifications.

Romiszowski (1997), describes a "networked society" of the 21^st Century, where the "knowledge worker" is a key element in the education sector, being able to use knowledge to create new knowledge and skills. Including concepts such as, learning to learn, to navigate through cyberspace and develop cognitive competencies like, observation, link, association, transfer and application. He also describes issues related with the technical feasibility of the courses, the quality of materials, the autonomy in the learning process, the collaborative learning and the implementation of most flexible ways of learning (on-the-job, just in time, tailor-made).

The increasing presence on the www of the so called "Virtual Schools" proves that there is already a lot of "online thinking" constructed in the form of virtual resource centres, with virtual students/participants and teachers/tutors, that work in nets and in collaboration, constituting virtual learning communities.

For example, the Virtual University of Brasilia (Univir), announced in March 1999 the creation of the Central West Virtual University (Univir-CO), in which there are 7 Universities involved, joining partnerships of content and technologies. This is an example of how to share technical and human resources, ideas and knowledge, it is an exercise of learning production. As the co-ordinator of Univir says, " Most importantly is that there no longer is a centre of knowledge because knowledge is now everywhere".

In summary, the continuing distance training strategies are more oriented towards a new "online" civilisation. Being in expansion they deserve the greatest acuity on behalf of the responsible persons for education and training, keeping in mind the significant need for improvement of the systems.

The present study, at the same time that it helps us to broaden this theme, it may constitute a small contribution to the development of a learning culture that helps us construct a coherent society encouraging creativity and innovation.

3 - Research Methodology

The present study is generically integrated in the context of the Continuous Training area and will focus on its provision at distance via www. It is our aim to evaluate the use of the web for educational proposes in Southern Europe and Latin America.

The offer of Continuous Training at Distance via the web in those geographical regions is characterised by a diversity of issues. Thus, it is valid to say that the continuous training offer is essentially composed of training sessions, which combine face to face with distance provision.

The distance training sessions, not being exclusively based on the web, favour this component increasingly.

Despite this situation, in some cases the offer is exclusively at distance, for instance in the cases of the Universitat Oberta da Catalonya in Spain or of the Virtual University of Brasilia in Brazil.

In Continuous Training at Distance the web is used to support the availability of contents, and also to support communication and interactivity.

The geographical diversities of the areas that we studied are very important factors and can make the difference in the use of the available Internet tools for educational proposes.

Southern Europe and Latin American Countries object of this study.

When comparing Southern Europe to Latin America, it is essential to highlight some of the dimensions that characterise their diversity, namely:

Southern Europe

Southern European countries are distributed within a small area characterised by the use of different languages (each country has one language: Portuguese; Spanish; French; Italian and Greek). Within the same country, distances are short.

Due to historical reasons, some of the Southern European countries have developed particular and privileged relations with a set of other countries, which share the same language (Portuguese speaking countries, Spanish speaking countries, Francophone countries).

In Southern European countries, Distance Education, in the classical sense (correspondence courses and TV based teaching), was not very much developed.

Terrestrial communications, railways and roads are fairly good and the telecommunication networks are efficient.

Latin America

Latin American countries occupy a wide geographical area and are characterised by the use of only two languages (Portuguese in Brazil and Spanish in the other countries). Within the same country, distances between the cities can be very large.

In Latin American countries there is a tradition of Distance Education (including the traditional provision of correspondence courses).

In general, in Latin American countries terrestrial communications, railways and road systems are not as good, the distances are much larger and the telecommunication networks are poor.

Being this study on the field of education and training we would like to clarify the distinction between education and training.

Scott &Mayer (1991) propose 4 main dimensions to differentiate Education and Professional Training. In Table 1 this contrast is represented.

Contrast between Education and Professional Training

	Education	Professional Training
Objectives	Apprenticeship as an end Future utility Understanding	Apprenticeship as a mean Present utility Results
Cognitive context	Theoretical Oriented towards the student Emphasis on concepts	Practical Problem oriented Emphasis on practices
Teacher - Student Relationship	Active Teacher / Passive Student Dependent students Differences between students are minimised	Teacher and Students are both active Independent students Differences between students are noted
Relationship between students	Co-operation is not allowed Apprenticeship only through the teacher	Co-operation is encouraged Apprenticeship with fellows

Table 1: Font Scott&Mayer(1991).

The application of this distinction to online environments is of key importance for this study.

In fact, the words used nowadays to explain the type of education or training provided via the web vary depending on different contextual elements. Some authors use online education, online learning, others use virtual education, web-based education or web learning.

In the context of this study we will use one consensual term, "online education" that includes many other terms, namely: virtual education, Internet-based education, web-based education, and education via computer-mediated communication (CMC).

This definition of online education is based on Desmond Keegan's definition of distance education. Hence, online education is characterised by:

the separation of teachers and learners which distinguishes it from face-to-face education,

the influence of an educational organisation which distinguishes it from self-study and private tutoring,

the use of a computer networks to present or distribute some educational content,

the provision of two-way communication via a computer network so that students may benefit from communication with each other, teachers, and staff.

3.1 Study Objectives

In a case study approach, the institutions and their online education offer were investigated, aimed to address the following objectives:

Collect data on advanced web training offers in Southern Europe and Latin America;

Analyse the institutional practices and the functionality of the web courses in a user perspective;

To make available valid information about the impact of web use on education and training to people responsible for Continuous Training and Education.

3.2 Methodological Procedures

The methodological procedures followed were based on a qualitative approach. In this context the study uses a variety of procedures to collect and analyse data, aiming to empower the analysis base. The methodology used is hybrid, combining a set of evaluation methods.

The investigation was nevertheless oriented by a literature review, by institutional web site analysis and web courses analysis, by interviews to online learning co-ordinators (experts) and by a questionnaire to web course users.

The instruments used for collecting data, namely the procedures to analyse the web sites, the common guide for interviews and the questionnaire were designed after the world wide online education CISAER Survey (1999) and in accordance with the proposed objectives.

3.3 Data Collection
3.3.1 Web Site

Ravitz (1997), describes the importance of evaluation in the development of web training and considers that research should take into account the following dimensions:

Medium and Usability

Design & Structure (dimension, leadership, shared tasks)

Social Interaction (discourse analysis, flexible participation, friendliness)

The Results (Writing, Problem Solving, Retention, Motivation, Attitudes)

Sustainability

Khan (1999), published in his Web site information about his latest book "Web Based Learning". In this book, Khan is editor of articles about important issues of design, development, availability and evaluation of web based learning environments. The contents organisation of the book is based on the various dimensions of his Web Based Learning Framework (WBLF), assembling eight important factors to the students, including the following aspects: pedagogical, technological, institutional, ethic, management, interface design, support resources and online support.

In this context, an evaluation structure was developed in order to analyse the sites and the courses of the interviewed institutions.

Our evaluation was then based on a critical analysis of the sites using the following fundamental dimensions:

Institutional Dimension (Institution, course name, trainers, enrolment, pre-requisites, fees, certification, type of access, contacts);

Student Support Structures (administrative support, pedagogical support, technical support, co-ordination support, alternative mediums);

Technological Dimension (hardware, software, plug ins);

Ethical Dimension (author’s rights);

Co-operative Environment (synchronous and asynchronous communication);

Graphical interface (navigation system, screen design);

Pedagogical Dimension (objectives, course structure, contents, methodology, multimedia parts, type of resources, subjacent learning concepts);

Evaluation Strategies (pre-test, self–evaluation, partial evaluation, final evaluation, penalties, course evaluation);

Rhythm Techniques (interactivity, glossaries, search mechanisms, context maintenance, progress indicators);

Students Participation (homepage, publication of documents, participation in forums, suggestion links, etc).

3.3.2 Interviews to online learning Experts

The interview guidelines were proposed, discussed and tested by the international experts on distance education composed by the project partners (ANNEX I).

The interviews to experts were applied until February 1999 (ANNEX II).

3.3.3 Questionnaires to the web training users

The questionnaires to the users were developed according to criteria of functionality and utility. The users who answered the questionnaires participated in a course of a particular Institution.

The questionnaire was divided into 4 groups of questions:

Institutional Data (institution responsible for the course);
Trainee data (user);
Trainee Motivation and course administration and use;
Distance learning course evaluation.

After being developed, this questionnaire was submitted to 4 distance education experts, originating the final version of the questionnaire (ANNEX III).

3.4 Data Analysis

With all the data collected, namely the site analysis, the expert’s interviews and the questionnaires to the users, a qualitative analysis was implemented.

This qualitative analysis will be presented in a case study approach, by geographical area and by country, highlighting the most interesting cases in each one of the analysed countries.

The analysis is stratified in categories depending on the type of institution, as follows:

Higher Education Institutions

Training Centres

Private Companies

In the next pages you can find a Southern European overview, describing the countries and the cases studies from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece.

Following there is a Latin America overview, describing each country and it's case studies. The countries reported are Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela.

4. Southern Europe overview

Southern Europe is characterised by having different countries and languages in a relatively small geographical area.

Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece occupy an area of 1,581,376 square kilometres, with a population of 176,1 Million people, speaking 5 different official languages, independently of other less spoken languages in those countries.

Within each country, distances are not so important. The transport systems are in general terms good enough to allow people to travel and professionals are used to get training from their local training centres, or travel and get training in other training centres outside their home town. In the majority of enterprises it is rare to find a professional applying for training in other countries, not only because of the language difference, but also due to the distance and the costs involved.

Nevertheless, in the case of large companies or multinational companies, professional are induced to learn other languages, and it is common for them to learn or apply for learning in other countries.

In large enterprises training is developed in order to accomplish two goals: (1) to learn or to improve skills within the profession and (2) to empower personal development (socialisation) in a perspective of organisational improvement.

In small and medium size enterprises the development of training is mainly aimed at the acquisition of new skills within the profession.

Both large and small enterprises have difficulties when defining their training politics and practices.

In order to be able to compete in the global market, organisations are obliged to update their human resources and to organise their training in a systemic way.

In general, the design and training implementation within organisations is defined as follows:

1 – Strategic objectives of the organisation

2 – Training aims within the organisation

3 – Training needs analysis

4 – Training objectives and evaluation criteria

5 – Contents organisation in training programmes

6 – Selection of pedagogical methods

7 – Participants selection according to their needs

8 – Implementation of training programmes

9 – Evaluation of the training results

Other essential characteristics to be taken into account when analysing the different countries are related with:

The political organisation of the countries;

Besides the concentrated power in the central government, Spain, France and Italy also have a regional power level. On the other hand, Continental Portugal is, in European terms, a single region.

The law concerning the training activity within the countries;

In France the 1972 law regulates the training activity.

In table 2 below is shown the Southern European countries per language used, geographical area and inhabitants.

Country

Language

Geographical Area (sq. km)
Inhabitants

(Millions)

Portugal

Portuguese

92, 389

10,2

Spain

Spanish

504,788

39,2

France

French

551,000

58,3

Italy

Italian

301,255

57,8

Greece

Greek

131,944

10,6

Total

1,581,376

176,1

Table 2: Southern Europe

In the next pages Southern European Countries are analysed in the following order: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece.

First it is given a contextual information concerning the country and then the case studies are presented.

4.1 Portugal

Portuguese Distance Education is a very recent phenomenon.

The Portuguese Universidade Aberta was created in 1988 and is the Portuguese Public University devoted to Distance Education.

With the appearance of new and more powerful technologies, especially with the emergence of new information and communication technologies, other universities, oriented towards face-to-face studies, have developed a set of activities in the distance education field, especially using Internet tools.

Online education in Portugal is a very unstructured domain, at both public and private level.

There are no national bodies directly concerned with this issue and the universities that should be responsible for that development are starting their work in the field.

This means that the offer of distance learning courses using the web is not structured neither in the public institutions, universities or training centres. In fact, the Cisaer (1999) Survey shows that in Portugal there is no institution, which offer courses online in a systematic way. In almost all analysed cases, the web courses provided are developed in the context of pilot projects, financed by the European Union and with a limited life span.

INOFOR – the Institute for Innovation in Training is the single national body that expresses its concern with the emerging issues related to distance learning provision via the web. INOFOR promoted last November 1999, what was called the first National Conference dedicated to Distance Training. INOFOR has also promoted a network of Knowledge Resource Centres, which regroups 30 Resource Centres in a single Intranet. As knowledge resource centres, those structures will deliver to their particular target groups customised multimedia knowledge.

4.1.1 Higher Education Institutions

Universidade do Minho - several projects are being implemented. A part of those projects has the support of the European Union. Several Masters and Doctorate thesis in the distance education field have been produced, and others are in progress to be produced. Additionally several teachers are using the web to deliver contents, and to communicate with students.

Universidade de Aveiro announces, in their web site, "distance education" activities. It is a pilot project dedicated to full-time students and the aim is to serve as a backup support for face-to-face teaching. Additionally at the Faculty and Department levels there are a lot of European projects underway.

Universidade do Porto - the Faculty of Engineering (FEUP- Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto), has developed several European projects and is leading, together with the Fine Arts Faculty, a Master degree dedicated to Multimedia. There are also several pilot experiences with full time students, led by teachers.

Universidade Aberta – some courses have their administration made via the Internet, this means, course marketing and enrolment. Some tests can also be submitted via e-mail. In the Portuguese open university there is also a Master in Multimedia and there are a lot of studies and thesis in this field.

Instituto Superior Técnico, is involved in several pilot projects at European Level.

4.1.2 Training Centres

Training Organisations are increasing their concern about web learning environments. From their online offer we can highlight the following institutions:

TecMinho – being a Minho University Interface, it has acquired experience in the development of training projects, which could promote the links between the University and the surrounding enterprises. In this context, TecMinho through its Continuous Training Department has developed know how in the distance learning field. The Continuous Training Department is currently running two courses via the web and is involved in the development of a software tool capable of administrating their courses in the future.

AESBUC, is a training centre very close to the Biotechnology School from the Catholic University and has developed a powerful tool, which allows the manipulation of a large quantity of data, using databases. This tool was applied to distance learning in a web environment. TWT was used in several pilot-training sessions and it was also tested in the context of a post-graduate course.

Associação Empresarial Portuguesa, has created a web based environment designated Virtual School within a pilot project. The courses have one part face-to-face and another part at distance via online sessions (synchronous). The environment present at the web site presents the courses curricula and allows synchronous and asynchronous communication through elements like a forum and a chat room. In this so called virtual school, the concept "online session" is used, which means the use of a chat room, that is a synchronous activity in which the students "must" be online with their colleagues and the teacher. This is an environment created for communication only, and the materials and face-to-face classes are commanding the training activity. A small book, bibliography, a CD-ROM and a Video, compose the supporting material, which are available off-line.

4.1.3 Private Companies

Digito Formação - is a very young company offering web design courses. In those courses the web is used for presentation, communication, administration and teaching. The participants have a login and a password in order to work in the interactive area. The online classes are carried out in the form of texts and images that are automatically generated by the server. The server also manages the students. WWW is used for contents and for interactivity in an asynchronous way. The classes are carried out every day at a fixed moment.

4.2 Spain

Distance Education in Spain, was initiated in the seventies. UNED, the Spanish Open University, was created in 1972 aiming to improve the cultural progress and to socially develop the country in a perspective of equal opportunities.

In an open university spirit, UNED aims to facilitate the access to university studies to all people that, being in conditions to follow higher education studies, are not able to enrol in traditional universities due to labour constraints, to a disability, to their home location or any other constraint. The incoming crescent number of students enrolling at UNED can measure the large success of distance education in Spain.

Besides UNED, another institution was traditionally responsible for the large development of distance education in Spain: CEPADE (the Post-graduate Centre in enterprise management studies, directly dependent on the Madrid Polytechnic University General Foundation).

In the nineties, a new and very innovative university was born and revolutionised the distance education scene: the Universitat Oberta de Catalonya. Created by the Regional Government of Catalonya, this university had a new vision, to put information and communication technologies at the service of students and teachers.

From that point on, online education evolved rapidly and there are a large amount of face-to-face universities, training centres and private companies adopting this type of learning.

On the other hand, the Spanish Council of Ministers announced recently the " INFO XXI Strategic Initiative" planning to dedicate 2, 800 millions of Euros for information society initiatives, in the next 3 years.

4.2.1 Higher Education Institutions

UOC Universidade Oberta da Catalonya - Since 1995, UOC is dedicated to offering non face-to-face teaching by means of an innovative pedagogical system used by more then 10 000 students all over the world. UOC experiences are based on total space and time flexibility to access training, being the student the main actor in training. The Virtual Campus is an Intranet associated with a database. The participants are able to communicate amongst themselves, with the tutor and with the electronic environment, having access to forums and chats. The students also have access to a Virtual Library and to the bibliographical UOC database.

On the top of that, the student can use the UOC facilities (meeting rooms, computers, etc) located in several areas of Catalonya Country.

UNED - The base of UNED was not the new information and communication technologies, but the didactical material adapted to the courses. Thus, in the last years UNED is putting a lot of effort in order to adapt their methods to new technological possibilities. In the basis of national or European projects, UNED is changing its offer in terms of distance education. On the basis of projects and partnerships, UNED is creating a basis for online education and is preparing a Virtual Campus enabling individualised email, lists, newsgroups, chats, etc.

Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes – it is a virtual library set up in 1999 by the Alicante University. It is a web structure that has already 3000 Spanish literature classics available on the web. One of the highlighted aims of this virtual library is to promote the quantity and quality of Spanish contents in the web. With this kind of content available directly from the web, distance learning will widen its possibilities in order to attend a larger number of users.

4.2.2 Training Centres

CEPADE - CEPADE uses www for presentation, communication and teaching (tutoring) in their courses. In their web site we can find, free access, course presentation and time schedules along with other relevant information for potential students. CEPADE sends paper based material to the students and then uses the www for communication. As a support for the virtual campus CEPADE uses First Class and through this system promotes for each course: virtual classrooms, forums, lecture rooms, libraries, etc, providing the students with a collaborative learning environment.

ICT – Institut Catala de Tecnologia - Foundation related to Catalonya University, College of Engineers. WWW is used for presentation, communication, administration and training. Depending on the course, the type of media combination to be used is decided upon. WWW is used for its contents, for interactivity. There is little experience with sound and video. The training is digital. There are e-mail, forums, news, time schedule, curriculum and confidential messages. It is an intelligent system that goes from the CD-ROM to the web. The system allows that when there are questions, there are answers and registered in the web and, the web will provide you with extra information. The tutor is the animator that imposes the course rhythm.

4.2.3 Private Companies

GECSA - Gestion del Conocimiento S.A., is a private enterprise managed by the Universita Oberta de Catalonya and the Spanish Telecom – Telefonica. GECSA created in 1997, aims to facilitate the implementation of virtual learning and has promoted 35 virtual environments for learning targeting more then 4000 students. The enterprise develops precise methodological guides in order to report, adapt and prepare courses on the web, also developing tools for automatic generation of courses. Producing "virtual builders", GECSA allows the clients to build virtual learning tailor made solutions. Their clients are enterprises, public institutions and other organisations interested in improving their staff performance. It is interesting to note that GECSA does not have a web site. The enterprise activity is based on projects. For each project a co-ordinator is engaged and a flexible team is created. The people involved in each project have a specialised degree in the relevant context.

4.3 France

In France there are different structures organising and promoting online education, on the basis of pilot projects, either European or national.

The Ministry of Education, Research and Technology has set up a National Educational Network that allows individual users to access pedagogical multimedia material available on the web.

At the educasource web site (www.educasource.education.fr) and at the didasource web site (www.cnpd.fr/didasource/), it is possible to find an information system with pedagogical material and online documents.

The French "country regions" have also developed different strategies to promote online education, and there are other representative boards with web presence. Among others we can refer:

GEMME (Higher Education Group for Mediated Teaching), which groups higher education institutions and puts documents dedicated to open and distance learning available online;

the Paris Chamber of Commerce PREAU - a lab dedicated to the new educational technologies;

THOT the Internet service-news, distance learning to French speaking countries.

In the regional contexts we can also highlight the open and distance learning network created in the Rhône-Alpes area. This regional network regroups AFPA (3 sites), CNAM (4 sites), CNED (2sites), GRETA (9 sites). It is a network based on the voluntarism of its members, where the service is driven from the local community needs. It is a network open to all institutions interested in offering distance-training courses respecting common rules. This network uses standard technological and pedagogical environments.

CNED, the National Distance Education Centre has recently created its electronic campus, offering communication tools to students as well as the possibility to work on exercises and to be in permanent contact with the tutor.

In France, like in the rest of Europe, European pilot projects are responsible for a large part of the market movements.

Initiatives like Adapt, Leonardo, Socrates and the 4th framework programme (telematics, acts, etc) were driven to the information society development (1994-2000). The new initiatives, namely Equal, Leonardo II, the 5^th Framework Programme (specially the IST programme) intend to consolidate the European Knowledge Society (2000-2006).

The online education field is evolving rapidly in France and there is a large amount of face-to-face universities, training centres and private companies adopting this type of learning.

4.3.1 Higher Education Institutions

Face-to-face universities in France, like in other European countries, are initiating there way to online education. The basic level of intervention is at Masters and Continuous Training levels.

In France, the institutions that have worked "traditionally" in this field are CNED and CNAM, which work closely with universities.

CNED - has available different communication spaces, via telephone, Minitel and via the Internet (e-mail boxes, forums, newspapers, books exchange, etc). Access to the services is made via the CNED web site and via the Campus Electronique. In the latest, more then 50 000 hits last year (1999) were registered. At the tele-training space the pedagogical services develop the courses with interactive exercises and thematic information regularly updated. Before taking the courses, the students are evaluated and oriented. WWW is used for presentation, communication and teaching. In the CNED web site we can find an online catalogue with search facilities. The communication services provided allow communications between the participant and the tutor. WWW is used with all other media, especially with books and CD-ROMs. There are no chat facilities directly available.

CNAM - Different online education experiences at national and local levels. At CNAM Languedoc-Roussillon, the training managers decided to open the web site to all interested parties. One part of the courses’ content can be downloaded free of charge but the tutoring is chargeable. The courses are tutored via Internet with the possibility of doing an exam in the closest CNAM centre. Other CNAM experiences have concentrated in an integrated perspective, using a platform to attend 4 different regions, a total of 400 students. This formula, integrating contents and online administrative management is chosen by large training institutions in France.

4.3.2 Training Centres

CCIP - Chambre de Commerce et Industrie de Paris - the Chamber actively works on distance learning. In 1998, CCIP created a virtual campus for new technologies in education. CV-NTE is a project supported by 3 organisations: Le Préau, L´Eurotechnopolis Institut and Lotus France. Le Préau is an association that works on new education technologies. (Préau was created by CCIP, La Compagnie Bancaire, L´ Université de Technologie de Compiègne, l´École de Nationale Supérieur de Telecommunication de Paris; L´Eurotechnopolis is an association that studies the social and cultural impact of information technologies).

CV-NTE is a learning system for people who wish to do a project in the NTE domain and for tutors who coach them. The coaching is based on "learning by doing" and is developed using an ensemble of face-to-face interactions and at distance via the Internet. It is not only a technical system but also a pedagogical, organisational and economical system. The technological approach is based on Lotus France - Learning Space.

In 1998, the campus virtuel was attended by 11 trainees, with 3 tutors, a project manager and an assistant.

In 1999, CCIP developed a new technological system accessible via the Internet, supporting distance interaction between the people involved, allowing different types of communication and given the access to online documentation.

4.4 Italy

In 1990, the Ministry for the University and for Scientific Research and Development promoted the creation of the NETTUNO network, for the implementation of Distance University courses. A consortium of universities, enterprises and other institutions composed this network. NETTUNO was created in an institution open to educate workers and people with difficulties to attend local public universities for various reasons. Instead of using the traditional "Open University" model created in Spain and Portugal, the Italian government created NETTUNO, a large network composed of important universities and main enterprises from all over Italy. The NETTUNO consortium was responsible for the promotions of various European projects using its network participants.

The universities and other organisations involved in the project were already working in the field of distance education and continue to do so on an individual basis.

On the one hand, Politecnico de Milano, Politecnico di Torino, Università di Roma, RAI, Trainet (the Telecom Itália Training company) all largely contributed to the development of online education in Italy.

On the other hand, several institutions are enriching the online education field in Italy, schools are networking and providing online facilities like the "house of knowledge", a collaborative and distributed learning environment designed for teachers and students.

In a regional context there are also important experiences. The Emilia Romagna Region has put forward a plan designed by SINFORM for the setting up of a "Resources Centre for Multimedia Education & Open Distance Learning". The Project, incorporating regional and community strategies, proposes a systems operation designed to rationalise in one logical unit all the experience and results gained up until now in the field of professional training, especially in the innovative fields of Education Technology and Open Distance Learning.

Today, the Resources Centre for the ODL is a reference point at regional level for experimentation and dissemination of training schemes based on the methodology of the ODL and is aimed at the utilisation of multimedia material.

Besides national programmes and projects, European projects have largely contributed to the development of online education in Italy; face to face universities, companies, training centres are moving as fast as the information and communication technology demands.

4.4.1 Higher Education Institutions

Universities and polytechnics are moving to Internet based course, either at individual or at institutional levels. New technological infrastructures for online education have been created.

Torino University - offers a service called " Baudhaus" which is an online communication medium for New Media university experts The web site contains online downloadable doctorate thesis in the new media areas. It is more like an online resource centre contributing to the construction of the knowledge society.

Universitá di Roma "Tor Vergata" - has created a Distance Learning School, offering specialised teaching courses and professional training courses over the Internet. This service also contains the addresses of Italian schools on the Internet.

4.4.2 Training Centres

Centro Ghiglieno experienced successfully in 1996/97 a network training project, financed by the Ministry of Labour and by the European Social Fund, with the aim of disseminating information and communication technologies, in particular to spread the use of the Internet. The project Forza 9 trained 60 unemployed people who obtained a diploma as " technicians in Internet environments". They are now professionals in the information technology sector. This experience was in the genesis of the GhOL - Centro Ghiglieno Online, a virtual structure using the Internet for its distance training activity.

4.4.3 Private Companies

TRAINET - is a private company owned by Italian Telecom, specialised in the provision of training services. In its courses www is used for presentation, communication, administration and training. WWW is used for contents, together with CD-ROMs, books and other media, especially videoconference. Content is all you can build in HTML, audio files and video files with the tutor. Depending on the course, a didactical environment is created integrating web with face to face lectures. There is no chat available. Depending on the course, human tutoring can be provided using the help desk - problems and counselling using the system or using experts - e-mail tutoring. In the self-learning courses some levels of machine tutoring are provided, there are questionnaires embedded inside. Additionally, human feedback and automatic feedback are provided.

ITALICA - is a virtual campus dedicated to spreading the Italian language and culture. It is promoted by RAI international, and it is simultaneously a university, a theatre and an entertainment place.

Learning online - is announced in its web site to be the single European institute for university online education. The implicit philosophy is "the university when you want it and where you want it". The method used for online education is based on the Internet "learning online" environment and in the support of the personnel assistant and the tutor. The tutors are the companions in the university path, maintaining the motivation and answering all demands. The campus online attended to more then one thousand students, directly at their home using a simple PC. Besides training Learning online offers specialised masters.

4.5 Greece

In Greece, the level of Internet use is low compared to the number of inhabitants and compared to the other Southern European countries.

Source: EITO, Task Force, 1999

Greece, like the other Southern European countries, participates in different European pilot projects, but besides that, there is a low participation rate of Universities, Technical Education Institutes, Training Centres and Enterprises in the online education field.

Located in Greece, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) has been involved, since 1976, in the promotion and development of vocational training for young people, and the continuing training of adults, primarily through European-wide co-ordination of analysis and research activities.

Today, this Centre represents the principal knowledge base on this subject, having published hundreds of reports and sponsored research in all Community member states.

Within CEDEFOP, the European Electronic Training Village is a site dedicated to bringing experts in the field of Vocational Training together to share the latest information available. The electronic training village is an electronic resource centre (the users can download and read free publications, search lists on web sites by topic to find just the site you need, access bibliographical databases, the European Research Directory, the Terminological Database and the Institutional Database). In the words of CEDEFOP’s Director, Mr. Johan Van Rens, " The Electronic Training Village facilitates the flow of information amongst and between policy makers, researchers and practitioners in vocational education and training throughout Europe and beyond. Its aim is to stimulate communication, interaction and debate on the development of vocational training policy, practice and research."

5. Latin America overview

Latin American Countries and Peninsula Ibérica share 500 years of history. First as European colonies, then as Nations, Latin America and the Peninsula Ibérica have maintained a large relation, constituting a linguistic and cultural community. Our Societies face today two apparently divergent tendencies, towards the globalisation in one hand and towards the cultural identity in the other hand. It is our role to find the potential of the present situation. If in one hand we integrate ourselves in a technological revolution (towards globalisation), we should, in the other hand, proceed with the reinforcement of our shared culture, establishing relations with fellow colleagues and at the same time we should interact in the global market. Armando Villarroel (January 2000).

In a context of globalisation the challenges imposed by internet and by the introduction of online education and training are pushing the Latin American universities, training centres and enterprises in the sense of the creating consortiums, either internal or with other European Countries, in the other side of the Atlantic.

Large distances between cities, different types of development in a same country, large towns with million of inhabitants together with small and spread population groups in far towns and villages, not so good telecommunication lines, are the main features of the Latin American countries.

Organisations analysed in this study are from 5 countries, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela. In table 3 bellow there is a distribution of those countries by language, geographical area and inhabitants.

Country

Language

Geographical Area (sq. km)
Inhabitants

(Millions)

Brazil

Portuguese

8,511,965

158,7

Mexico

Spanish

1,972,000

96

Argentina

Spanish

2,776,653

34

Chile

Spanish

750,000

14

Venezuela

Spanish

912,050

21

Total

14,172,668

323,7

Table3: Latin America

When comparing Latin America with Southern Europe in terms of inhabitants, we observe that the whole population of Southern Europe is, near in figures (176,1 Millions)., to the population of Brazil (158,7 Millions).The highlighting difference being that Brazil speaks a single language.

One of the important dimensions of the analysis is related to the use of different languages by geographical area. The governments of the Latin countries are underlining the emergence of having more contents in Latin languages on the Internet.

Latin languages presence in the Internet in relation to English.

Data %

	WWW	Usenet
Spanish	3,4	2,4
French	3,8	1,4
Italian	2,0	2,5
Portuguese	1,1	1,1
Romaine	0,2	0,1

Font: União Latina, "The presence of Latin language and culture in the Internet ", 1998, http://www.unilat.org

The data presented are based on the hypothesis that 75% of the contents in the Internet are in English. Latin languages have in this context 10,5%.of presence on the Internet.

In the following pages you can find a description of the countries and of the organisations studied, first Mexico, then Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela.

5.1 Mexico

Up along the northern border, Mexico's disorienting tumult of heritages merge with the air-conditioned cultures of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Despite the considerable colonial legacy and rampant modernisation, there are still over 50 distinct indigenous peoples each with their own language, maintaining vestiges of their traditional lifestyles.

Covering almost two million sq. km, Mexico curves from the north-west to the south-east. On the west and south the country is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, with the Gulf of California lying between the Baja California peninsula and the mainland. Mexico shares borders with the USA (to the north), and Guatemala and Belize (to the south-east).

Spanish is Mexico's predominant language, but Mexican Spanish. About 5 million people in Mexico speak around 50 Indian languages; 15% of these Indians do not speak Spanish.

Having USA as the closest country, Mexican universities and other bodies have developed strong links with North American Universities. Those links provide them with new and upgraded knowledge in the online education field.

The most important and representative case study relates to the Technological System of Monterrey and its "Universidad Virtual". This university has close relations with some of the most important North American Universities working in online education, namely:

University of Texas, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, University of Wisconsin, Mount Royal College, George Mason University, Simon Fraser University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of British Colombia, Brown University, University of California.

The Virtual University of the technological system of Monterrey is an Education Institution based on Teaching - Learning systems that operate throughout the more advanced communication technologies and electronic networks.

Aiming to support the technological campus and to provide training/education in different contexts in Mexico, Latin America, United States of America and Canada, the Universidad Virtual (UV) offers courses at several levels:

Professional levels, Masters and Doctorates and Continuing Education level.

Educational Models in UV.

In order to provide the students with knowledge and with tools for their own development, the UV has put in practice in all its courses educational models that convert the process centred on teaching to a process centred on collaborative learning. In this context the teacher, more then the teaching role, is responsible for designing experiences, exercises and activities that improve the collaboration processes.

Through collaborative learning it is desired that the students:

- Learn by themselves

- Learn from their colleagues through conversations and discussions

- Solve problems in a collaborative way.

The UV at the moment has three satellite channels that connect it with 8 countries. They offer 150 courses by semester and 500 hours of satellite transmission per week. This system allows the UV to have 29,887 students in the American Continent.

The tools provided for the students and teachers in its courses are:

World Wide Web

E-mail

discussion groups

online conferences (chat)

Learning Space

CD-ROMS

One Touch

Interaction Remote Systems

Satellites Systems

Videos

Videoconference

The UV network is composed of 14 emission sites at the following campus: The Monterrey Technological Campus and the Universities of Carnegie Mellon and Thunderbird (USA), Universities of Waterloo and British Colombia (Canada) and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

From the 730 receiving sites: 69 offer graduate and post-graduate courses, 95 offer programmes for the development of teachers, and 566 use programmes from Aula Virtual Empresarial (Entrepreneurs Virtual Class)

5.2 Brazil

Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country, occupying almost half of the South American continent and bordering every country in it except for Chile and Ecuador. Much of Brazil is scarcely populated, although some regions with previously low population densities, such as the Amazon, are being rapidly settled, logged and depleted.

Brazil can be divided into four major geographic regions. The long, narrow Atlantic ranges between the Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia, the Planalto Brasileiro, which extend over most of Brazil's interior. The Paraguay Basin and the Amazon Basin (the 6275km long, the Amazon is the world's largest river and the Amazon forest contains 30% of the world's remaining forest). According to a 1996 United Nations report, Brazil has the world's most unequal distribution of wealth.

Portuguese, infused with many words from Indian and African languages, is spoken by all Brazilians.

The two major cities in Brazil are Rio de Janeiro, with 7 million inhabitants, and S. Paulo, the largest city in South America, with 17 million people, a city of immigrants and ethnic neighbourhoods (descendants of Italian and Japanese immigrants).

Distance Education was introduced in Brazil in 1936, with the first correspondence Universities and Schools. The Distance Education perspective has been since then, on the one hand, to accomplish alphabetisation aims, and on the other hand, to overcome distances.

Prof. Barcia from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, in his 1997 article, "Post - Graduation at Distance - the construction of a Brazilian Model", overviews distance education history in Brazil:

"In the beginning of the 70’s, the number of illiterate people in Brazil was an obstacle to the modernisation of the country, mainly in the northern and north-western regions.

In the impossibility to confide in the pedagogical principles of the exiled, Paulo Freire, the option of the government was education via satellite.

This decision was based on the report "Advanced System for Communication and Education in National Development - ASCEND", idealised by Stanford University, which proclaimed the effectiveness of a "total system" prototype of audio-visual use to attain primary education.

In 1974, the SACI project appeared in the format of a soap opera and attended to the first four series of the first level. The project was interrupted in 1977-1978. (Mattelart, 1994).

Another initiative that also didn’t succeed was the project developed by the University of Brasilia in the mid 70s, when influenced by the success of the British Open University, acquired translation and publication rights and began to produce some of its own courses.

The inadequate aspect of the management discourse, presenting Distance Education as a substitute for face to face education, the political divergences of the time and the lack of management competencies were the causes pointed out by Nunes. Today, the UnB has the support of an Open Education Centre, Continuous and at Distance - CEAD, linked to the Rectory and to the area of University Extension that has already produced various courses in press, video and disks and that gave origin to the present Virtual University of Brasilia.

Despite Nunes’ observation, some projects are highlighted, such as the Foundation of Tele-education of Ceará - FUNTELC, also known as Education Television - TVE of Ceará that, since 1974, develops regular basic education and in 1993 had 102.170 students registered in 150 municipalities.

The Brazilian debate on the possibilities of distance education as an alternative for post-graduate programmes is marked by the attacks and pressures promoted by the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC). From the studies and orientations to the elaboration of the Law Decree 2494 de 11 of February of 1998, which regulated distance education imposing reservations for post-graduates.

Victorious along with the Ministry of Education with its restrict position, SBPC, by blocking the development at a scale of university competencies to offer and manage post-graduate programmes at distance, imposes on the Brazilian universities a market reserve.

On the other hand, international universities until then dedicated to face to face education, as was the case of Stanford, John Hopkins, California Tech, Michigan, Cambridge, Harriot-Watt, and Oxford for example, they incorporated in the 80’s and 90’s in their activities distance education, and had a role in the market until then dominated by the universities created to solely attend to distance education, such as the Open University, in England, and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distância (UNED), in Spain and the open universities of Israel and Portugal, for example. The University of Michigan established a videoconference room in the city of São Paulo, in the first trimester of 1998, to attend to students in distance education, as a model of transnational university emergent at the end of this century.

The determination of the SBPC to prevail a restrictive regulation for post-graduates "strictu sensu" at distance in Brazil is contributing to the opening of the Brazilian market to internationalised universities. As an obliterated defence strategy, it is said that the Ministry of Education does not acknowledge the distance titles offered by foreign institutions. In order to respond, it is enough just to ask companies if what is of interest to them is the seal of the MEC or the professional’s competencies."

On the other hand, the Brasília Virtual University coordinator, Lina Barreto, declared in her CISAER interview last year that

"There are several national projects going on, namely:

The project INTERLEGIS, which is a partnership between the federal senate, the municipalities and other interested bodies, targeting all Brazilian legislators aiming to: (1) prepare legislators for new elections (give them conditions to legislate) and (2) train the civil community in issues related to the government and to the legislation activity.

The project Virtual University of Centro Oeste is a partnership between 7 Universities, which have come together to promote a course "inter-disciplinarily of contents and competencies" The first step was to select a course among the courses presented by each university. The Goiais University course was selected giving the DNA for the web course - a Teachers Training Course aiming to train School Managers and to disseminate and promote multiplier effects. Mato Grosso University, for instance, has given contents for financial issues. The compromise is to transfer know-how amongst Universities.

There is also the announcement of a Virtual University in the Amazon.

In the future, we will have 500 graduate courses with individual modules and the user will have the possibility to choose its own course. The idea is to have a kind of self-knowledge, the students also being able to participate in the construction of knowledge."

The "School of the Future" of the University of São Paulo, announces on its web site:

The "School of the Future" of the University of São Paulo, Brazil's largest and most productive centre of higher education, is an interdisciplinary laboratory that investigates the question of how the new communications technologies can improve learning at all educational levels. Begun in 1989, as a departmental laboratory in the School of Communications and Arts, it is growing increasingly.

Our work began with an erroneous point of departure: we assumed that the interactivity, the pretty pictures and sounds of multimedia and the excitement of international collaborative work using the Internet (then Bitnet), were all that was needed to keep young people from abandoning the classroom.

At that time, a mere 20% of primary school children in Brazil finished the fourth grade, and the average formal schooling of the Brazilian worker was 4.7 years in length. Fortunately, we were spared the danger of committing many errors when the laboratory received a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank, which permitted us to send ten of our researchers for observational visits to similar laboratories in other countries (U.S.A, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, France, Spain, and Israel) and to bring ten leading foreign researchers for short periods to our place of work.

What we learned from the exchange programme was very simple: technology is not the answer to education's problems, and that the best way to proceed was to examine the present practices of our educational system, discover its favourable and unfavourable points, "design" a new model of practice, and only then begin to choose the technological artefacts and systems, which could give good support to the new model. Our studies showed that the cluster of ideas circulating in everyone's mind about the role of education in society and how best to carry out the educational mission belonged to a type of social organisation, which was rapidly disappearing (the industrial society), being substituted by a new one (the information society). The new cluster of ideas, which we then (from 1991 on) called the "new paradigm in education."

Last December 1999, as a result of a general call to all the Federal Universities, using Redifes - the University Network of Distance Education, the first meeting of the Public Virtual University of Brazil - occurred in order to promote distance education and online education projects. In Brasilia University, 18 Federal Universities (5 from the North, 10 from the South and 3 from the Central west), representatives of the Ministries of Education, of Science and Technology, of Communications and the Parliament Front for the support of Distance Education, were represented in a total of 45 people.

Many other initiatives, bodies, public and private boards are moving fast towards the new knowledge society and each time the web is searched, using the Brazilian web search engines or the links to the main universities working in online education there is new and updated information available.

5.1.1 Higher Education Institutions

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - Laboratório de Ensino a Distância: LED is the Distance Education Lab from the Santa Catarina Federal University depending on the Federal Government and the Ministry of Education and Culture from Brazil.

The LED uses the www for presentation, communication, administration and teaching in its courses.

Web site overview: (1) common area with information, curricula, working issues, statistics, etc; (2) restricted area for students – online distance learning environment containing learning activities.

The courses are customised, meaning that the media used depends on the students’ needs and contexts. Depending on the aims of the course and on the student group needs and context, the following media can be used: videoconference, teleconference (one way video, two way audio), Internet (working environment - tools and pedagogical strategies), CD-ROMs, video, printed material, free phone line.

The decision on the type of media to be used depends on the objectives of the course, the nature of the content, the group of students’ needs and the students’ context (technological and other). The courses are customised for each group of students, usually the students are from the same company or institution or university and they are located in different cities in Brazil. Using a Virtual University metaphor the student is seen as an identity member of a virtual community, responsible for the construction of knowledge.

The student can use the working rooms, the library, the forums and he/she can make publication online.

All programming was done in order to make the students’ life easier, and everything is in natural language.

All types of communication are used: institution to student, student to institution, student to student, student online. In particular, in the student to student communication there is a component of collaborative work between students - they accomplish tasks together in small groups.

Teachers who are responsible for providing the content are also responsible for the courses’ tutoring. The tutoring is provided to a student or to a group of students. Answers to student's queries are dealt with in a maximum of 24hrs.

The LED offers different types of courses: (1) Doctorates; (2) Masters and Specialisation's (500 students); (3) Continuous Training Courses (60h-80h courses spread along 3 months with a total of 160 000 students enrolled in the last 3 years)

In the Masters and Specialisation courses, a diploma and a certificate are provided and the course is recognised by the Federal Government and the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture.

In the Continuous Training Courses, a participation certificate is provided to students.

The course costs are calculated by groups of students and negotiated with the client, which can be an institution, a university or an enterprise.

On average, a 2 year Masters course will cost the client 157 120 EUROS for a group of 20 students.

PUC - Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - Escola do Futuro

The School of the Future is a research group dedicated to the study new communication technologies applied to education. The 60 people working in this group are involved in different projects, which contribute to the development of the online education field.

Throughout "Edusoft" (www.edsoft.futuro.usp.br), USP offers a useful online service to teachers across Brazil, which is a regularly updated directory of all educational software in the Portuguese language to be found on the Brazilian market, now including over 1,000 items.

On the other hand, in order to shorten the time between the research results and their dissemination among schoolteachers, the School of the Future has created a policy of regularly offering courses, seminars and workshops for teachers.

The Virtual Library of the Brazilian Student is another service available over the Internet, where student, teachers and other interested parties have free access to texts, images, sounds and other online resources.

Universidade Virtual de Brasília - the Brasilia Virtual University is part of the University of Brasilia (a traditional face to face University, which created a Distance Education department 20 years ago). The main strategy of the virtual university technical structure is to promote ideas of an open learning system, in which everything is shared between tutor and students. The tutor is encouraged to share information, material and bibliography with students. This is also a question of tutor update and adaptation to the new media available. Anyway, the tutor is the owner of the concept and has the freedom to use his/her own style and to open or close more or less the course. The courses are built keeping in mind the main idea of creating in the students the sense of autonomy and responsibility in their education. Also responsible for hosting the Universidade Virtual do Centro-Oeste, a consortium of 7 Universities, joining contents and technological partnerships.

Universidade da Baía – Biblioteca Virtual de Ensino a Distância – the Baía University has recently created the Virtual Library for Distance Learning with the support of the MCT (Ministry of Science and Technology) and CNP (the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). This virtual library is a web-based infrastructure containing essential data about Distance Education in Brazil. Being a Virtual Library it has available online documents for consultation and downloading (Distance Education Masters and Doctorate thesis).

5.1.2 Private Companies

Intelecto - Is a very important private company working in various areas, from the social-economic research, to public sector organisation and administration, distance learning, communicational technologies and multimedia production. Under the distance learning heading Intelecto is a massive provider, with a range of services at international level, including the development of educational strategies and methodologies as well as the preparation of governmental policies. Intelecto provides international information on the web for distance learning users.

5.3 Argentina

The overwhelming feature of Argentina's largely immigrant population is the degree to which the cultural traits of Europe have remained intact during their transposition to the so-called New World. For such reasons, Argentina is a Latin American country in which Europeans, North Americans and Anglophone can feel at ease.

Argentina forms the eastern half of South America's long, tapering tail. It's a big country - the second largest on the South American continent. The country can be divided into four major provinces: the Andes, the North, the Central region and Patagonia.

Spanish is the official language, but some immigrant communities retain their language as a badge of identity. Italian is widely understood, reflecting the influence of the country's single largest immigrant group.

5.3.1 Higher Education Institutions

Universidad de Buenos Aires - Is a traditional face to face university, which has set up a virtual campus. UBANET is a partnership made by TRAINET (a Italian Company from Gruppo Telecom Italia ) and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. UBANET CAMPUS VIRTUAL is a result of the collaboration between these institutions and additionally, with the George Washington University. UBANET integrates technology with education. It offers training systems managed with the most advance technological resources. Its services are based on the one-to-one concept highlighting the personification to satisfy the individual needs of the students.

5.3.2 Private Companies

CED - Centro de Estudos a Distância, Cordoba – is an educational private institution using distance learning methods since 1996. Their educational service respects the adult learning characteristics, giving a diploma to adult students. Until the end of 1998 CED graduated 554 students, which are continuing their studies in private or public universities.

Arnet Educativa, Buenos Aires - is a place in the network of networks, offering a great amount of possibilities to teachers and students, consolidating a bridge between experts and the educational environment. This organisation is backed up by more than 800 teachers, colleges and universities from all over the world. In Arnet Educativa, users can take advantage of tools like the forums or the chat rooms in an educational environment, with the advantages of sharing images or other media. In the online courses the user can obtain updated knowledge. The permanent assistance of expert tutors will enable the user to understand the contents.

5.4 Chile

Chile's European heritage is pervasive, for centuries the Paris education of many Chilean intellectuals influenced the country's art, music and architecture. Chile extends some 4300km from the desert north to the glacial south. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean on the west and shuttered by the Andes on the east. Chile shares most of its extensive eastern border with Argentina, and borders Peru and Bolivia in the north. Rarely extending beyond 200km in width, Chile makes up for longitudinal mincing by rising rapidly from sea level to 6000m.

Despite having the most European community in South America, indigenous traditions persist in the Andean foothills and in the southern plains.

Spanish is Chile's official language, though a handful of native languages are still spoken.

The 90´s can be remembered by the profound change in the educational system in Chile.

The country is trying to move to the information society and several web portals have been created, namely:

"the state at the service of the citizens", www.estado.cl, including a unity for the state modernisation UTIC, http://modernizacion.cl/utic/index.html,

the Ministry of Education site http://www.mineduc.cl/ , which is highly involved in the promotion of activities that allow youngsters to use the information and communication technologies.

In 1992 the Ministry of Education started the project ENLACES aiming to connect all Schools to Internet. This pilot experience was initiated with12 Schools. Since 1999, 4200 Schools are connected to Internet. www.enlaces.cl

The Educational Resources Centre http://canelo.iee.ufro.cl/Recursos is a service set up by the Education Computers Institute from the University of Frontera and the Ministry of Education. This service includes online resources, educational experiences, educational software and other important contents.

It is also important to note that several universities have set up virtual campuses, in partnership with other international universities.

Many other initiatives, bodies, public and private boards are integrating new networks and partnerships. Online education is a hot field in Chile.

5.4.1 Higher Education Institutions

Chile University - has created the distance education programme Aula 21 aiming to respond to the new needs arising from the use of information and communication technologies. Throughout this programme the University promotes internally the development of activities conducing to the development of research in the distance education field, more particularly in the online education field. Developing new solutions (courses, seminars, educational packages) or complementing existing educational programmes. The aim is to use methodologies centred on learning in order to contribute to innovative teaching. It is the teacher's responsibility to co-ordinate the use of ICT using innovative methodologies contents and evaluation strategies.

Pontificia Universidade Católica de Chile - set up a service called TELEDUC in 1978, aiming to plan and implement distance learning courses, using different mediums and targeting professionals interested in their continuous training, in a philosophy of open university. TELEDUC has evolved its educational model and the technologies used. The virtual campus has been created more recently and allows students to study from their home using the web for communication, co-operation and work. The concept is again learner centred and using human resources, technological mediums and a support system evaluating and observing the student's evolution in the use of the whole infrastructure.

5.5 Venezuela

Venezuela is a country of natural beauty and dramatic contrasts: the snow-capped peaks of the Andes in the west, and steamy Amazonian jungles in the south.

Venezuela is situated on the northern coast of South America, north of Brazil and between Colombia and Guyana.

Almost all Venezuelans speak Spanish, though remote tribes speak some 25 indigenous tongues.

Venezuela's capital, Caracas, is a metropolis of nearly 3.5 million inhabitants.

The Universidad Nueva Esparta, Caracas ( www.une.ve) - has set up a Virtual Post - Graduation Centre offering specialised online courses, Masters and Doctorates at distance via the use of a web based environment. It is an International platform, with teachers located in different countries and cities, from Brazil to Barcelona. At the virtual web site one can find teachers’ and students’ comments to the online education service.

6 – Conclusions

From the present research it is clear that the increasing use of www resources is pushing up global policies in the education and training sector. In the last four years, we have testified the increase use of Internet resources. In the education and training sector Europe is making an effort to have significant presence on the web, supporting the availability of different kinds of resources. The priority has been on the digitalisation of existing resources.

Besides, the European Commission (1999 work programme) underlines the importance of this strategy stating " help to create a user-friendly information society by building a global knowledge, media and computing space that is universally and seamlessly accessible to ALL through interoperable, dependable and affordable products and services.

In addition Romano Prodi, European Commission President, at the IST Conference in Finland, last November 1999, stated, "These changes, the most significant since the Industrial revolution, are far-reaching and global. They are not just about technology. They will affect everyone, everywhere. Managing this transformation represents one of the central economic and social challenges facing Europe today. The e-Europe initiative is intended to help overcome these challenges and thereby accelerate the modernisation of the European economy, with a positive impact on employment, growth, productivity and social cohesion ..."

It is our conclusion from the present study that Southern European organisations have a huge potential to become online education providers. Latin American organisations have already began this infra-structural process, especially in Brazil, building up on collaborations with the major US Universities.

In spite of the fact that Southern European Universities, Training Centres and Enterprises are becoming aware of the need to change to e-worlds, they need to react accordingly. European traditional organisations are now obliged to move to different seating, a quick response one.

Some of the case studies of Latin American Countries proved the existence of global approaches, based on the creation and development of international consortiums, and resources sharing: knowledge, technologies and expertise.

European Universities, Training Organisations and Enterprises need to share expertise and deliver their work over the www in a virtual community environment, contributing to build up a knowledge society, where parts of knowledge can be manipulated by professional staff.

The present evaluation being a departure for the understanding of Southern European and Latin American online education offer, allows us to reach new structural and pedagogical paradigms. The role of the actors involved in the e-learning process should change in the near future, adapting to the technological and pedagogical changes imposed by the knowledge society.

Teachers must leave their roles as content owners, whose mission is the transmission of information, adopting their role as instructors, tutors in the construction of knowledge, animators in the development of identities and collaborative learning processes. Those changes should operate at the level of new interactive communication processes in virtual and real environments.

The students should be involved as key and active elements and as producers of content, understanding and knowledge.

The experts, either in content, technologies, pedagogy or management should be constituted as permanently "under construction" resources, updating their skills on a continuous basis.

The online administrative system should be "under construction", together with experts, students, teachers and other human resources involved.

The systematic changes at the level of the public and private organisations should be led by the need to promote e-literacy. The demanded changes are centred on behaviour, reflecting on the strategies of the education system itself. It is clearly a question of developing new ways of communication and learning. To promote e-communication congregating concepts like collaboration, interaction, co-operation and interactivity.

In an economy of scale perspective, high quality material can be produced at lower costs and learners can have greater choices, choosing material, teachers, systems and services. This is then an opportunity both to pursue the consolidation of recent progress in European integration and the preparation for the 21st century.

7 - Recommendations to EU Decision Makers

The European policies supporting the integration and use of information and communication technologies, either in enterprises, universities, schools, training centres or at home is pushing the market to react to these changes.

Traditional European Universities, either face-to-face or at distance, are slowly moving to online education. Pilot experiences shown the use of online education as a complement to full time students learning and as a tool for upgrading their continuous training offer.

Traditional universities need to have tools and models that help them to migrate to online education in a structured and upgrading way.

The same happens to enterprises, schools and training centres, they all need to implement changes.

In southern Europe, most teachers live closed in a school "ghetto" facing structural constraints, fighting against difficult logistic problems and being unable to overcome inadequate curricula.

Information and communication technologies can, on the one hand be part of the possible solution to those structural problems, but on the other hand, they constitute a threat for teachers and trainers.

They must face this behaviour change, teachers can no longer be the owners of knowledge, they should be, instead, a kind of knowledge broker, guiding learners in their learning ways, throughout different paths and different contents.

The existing gap between teachers and learners is partly due to different reactions to change. Adults and youngsters learn very differently.

If on the one hand, youngsters have no difficulties to be experts in games and to manipulate computer tools, on the other hand teachers, trainers and adults in general face more difficulties in those fields. This existing gap creates more vulnerable teachers.

There is then a need for training teachers, to promote the e-literacy, to implicate teachers in the process of creating an educational web culture, using other means other than the traditional ones, preventing the dangers of e-exclusion.

Exactly the same happens in the context of the training centres. Established as face to face structures, training centres are pushed to the new online environments and to the use of information and communication technologies in their training offer. Their staff, educators, technicians and trainers need to be updated.

And again the same applies to enterprises moving to virtual and online environments.

The following recommendations, addressed to politicians, managers and educational responsible parties, are based on the research results presented in this chapter, and will be discussed bellow:

Support migration to online education and training throughout the establishment of virtual educational organisations, namely: virtual campus, virtual training centres, virtual libraries, etc.

Provide support to educational staff training (how to prepare and organise "online education" in a structured way, how to put your educational resources on the web, how to interface with tutors and content providers, how to deal with technological change, etc).

Promote the support to emerging educational professions in innovative fields (the "educational knowledge broker", the "educational knowledge marketeer", the " educational knowledge designer", etc)

Support migration to online education and training

There are a growing number of institutions working online. In southern Europe we have found pilot projects and experiences, but there is a lack of structured and professional virtual organisations.

In order to have a stronger expression over the web, European universities, training centres and enterprises need to acquire the knowledge to be able to migrate to structured online educational systems. Examples from Latin America, especially from Brazil show that to create a knowledge base in this field it is necessary to act with a strategic perspective, integrating international partnerships and consortiums. European organisations need to acquire information and knowledge about administrative systems to administer and manage students, teachers, technological experts, contents, pedagogical variants, assessment and evaluation dimensions.

Provide support to train educational staff

In order to produce changes in behaviour, massive training activity should be promoted to the staff involved in the education process.

To change the role of the educational staff training must be provided, especially in what concerns the learning process itself. That is the new role of the teacher, as tutor guiding students through learning paths, picking up the attention of the learners using effective messages, etc.

The new role of the learner, participating in the construction of its learning path, collaborating with others in order to construct common and dynamic knowledge.

The technological experts must be trained either to upgrade their educational perspectives or to upgrade technological innovations.

Promote the support to emerging educational professions in innovative fields

New professions related to the online education and training should be supported.

Professions related with the emerging e-marketing and knowledge fields should appear, namely the "educational knowledge broker", the "educational knowledge marketeer", the " educational knowledge designer", etc.

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Country	Language	Geographical Area (sq. km)	Inhabitants (Millions)
Portugal	Portuguese	92, 389	10,2
Spain	Spanish	504,788	39,2
France	French	551,000	58,3
Italy	Italian	301,255	57,8
Greece	Greek	131,944	10,6
Total		1,581,376	176,1