SEMINÁRIO INTERNACIONAL GUIDE UNISULVIRTUAL EAD

The role of virtuality in Higher Education

Why discuss this issue now?

 

The Seminar will approach the following topics:

 

• Virtual Higher Education Trends.
• Virtual Education in Latin America.
• Views on Common Spaces of Distance Higher Education in the MERCOSUR.
• Cross-border e-Learning: linguistic, cultural and technological problems.
• E-Learning, Blended Learning and m-Learning: characteristics and problems.
• Interdisciplinary Investigation in Virtual Higher Education.
• Open Educational Resources for Virtual Learning: what works and what doesn’t.
• Thinking the University of the Future: formative strategies for distance education and building network knowledge.
• Social Neworks and Social-Cultural-Educational Networking.
• Lessons Learned and the Virtual Higher Education Scenario.

 

The necessary and profound transformation required by universities and higher education in general is related to the central role of production, egalitarian and intensive distribution and use of knowledge, which stand out amidst the most important needs of the 21st Century society. They are still debts to be settled for the social, cultural and economic development of our society, which have not overcome different forms of inequality and exclusion.

 

This means that components and processes have not been authentically revised in the light of the current global, socioeconomic, technological and digital transformation.

 

Satisfying that demand entails not only the configuration and the development of general and specific digital competences for an effective and socially useful development of graduates in particular in new and interdisciplinary areas of knowledge but also the acknowledgement that learning takes place throughout one’s life (lifelong learning), establishing another relationship between society and training centered on technological mediations. That includes redesigning the old concept of university autonomy which, although was the distinctive element characterizing this institution, resulted in self-centeredness and disjunction in relation to economic productivity and non-conventional culture.

 

This is a crucial point in a time when network society and the Internet tools (not only Web 1.0, but also Web 2.0 and 3.0, or semantic web) favor the participation and the creation of knowledge through a global socio-historical change whose main actors were the users with all their doubts and questions.

The ICTs – Information & Communication Technologies – in addition to allowing a large quantity of information to flow rapidly, in global scale and in real time, change the meaning, content and traditional formats that have characterized for centuries the Higher Education system in Latin America and in many other regions.

 

This, on the one hand, establishes that powerful socio-cognitive functions and basic attitudes related to flexible learning – such as curiosity, interest, critical thinking, creativity, experimentation, self-management and solidarity, amongst others – should lead the way when performing each phase of the learning system in every filed of study, work, investigation, etc.

 

On the other hand, highly professionalized resources are required in the organization of Higher Education Institutions, in the structure of curriculum projects mediated by technology and in the assessment of all the components of such educational programs.

 

However, we should not consider the integration of advanced technology in Higher Education as the panacea for all the problems of society. Much to the contrary, we must reconsider the tie between such higher education and the society where it takes place, which should foster innovative projects – where technological-virtual mediations are unavoidable.

 

The transition from traditional universities to virtual higher institutions combining face-to-face interaction with virtuality in a flexible manner and the development of knowledge and critical thinking as required by the current digital era are the main themes of the seminar.