International collaboration in distance education
for geography students – experience of Vilnius University
Geography in Klaipeda University. There are also very few departments of related subjects in the same universities. None of the other higher education institutions have any geographical or even geography-related departments and actually there are no geographical disciplines in their study programmes. Vilnius University has the oldest traditions in geography studies and at present it holds the strongest posi-tion in Lithuania. Table 1 illustrates the situaposi-tion in Geography teaching at Vilnius University.
The methods of teaching in the whole of Lithuanian higher education including Vilnius University are very traditional – old fashioned lecturing dominates. Other teaching methods involve seminars, practicals, field practice and self-learning (particularly when preparing project work) but their significance is less important.
The main reasons why traditional lectures dominate are related to the lack of possi-bilities for self-learning. Students don’t have sufficient reading materials, there are for example very few text books in Lithuanian, which is related to the very low demand.
Readings in English are also not readily available and on the other hand very few students can read in English adequately enough. Modern teaching equipment like multimedia projectors have only just been introduced in recent years, but at present they are used just occasionally. It seems that this situation will not change radically in the near future because above-mentioned reasons will not disappear overnight.
Table 1. Personal structure of Department of General Geography of Vilnius University Level Number
of persons Remarks
Bachelor studies 110 Every year 30 students enter to the department and approxi-mately 25 receive bachelor diploma. It is 4-year studies.
Postgraduate
(Masters) 30 Up to students enter the master programme and ap-proximately 12 receive master degree.
Postgraduate
(PhD) 6
Every year one or two persons enter to the postgraduate studies, which last usually 4 years. VU is the only institu-tion with the right to prepare PhD students in geography in Lithuania.
Staff Stable number. Assistant professors prevail in the teach-ing personnel.
However our department started to take part in the project raised by colleagues from Turku University (Finland) in 1999. The project was organised as a part of the Baltic Sea Region Studies Programme and involved Universities from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The programme mainly involved the international exchange of students between Baltic Sea countries. The main idea of this project was to employ distant education techniques and methods for international collaboration in preparing geography students through international studies via virtual reality without physical journeys. The Internet and audio conferencing were the main tools of learning. Finally two different disciplines of human geography were designed and have been completed several times during the period between 1999 and 2004. This was a completely different experience both for teachers and students. The main idea
Designing and teaching the distance education courses in geography
The idea of using modern techniques for exchanging information is old enough as well as that of distance education, which permits learners to receive information and knowledge without known limits of the usual forms of teaching. So it isn’t strange that this type of education is most popular among the working population, who have no possibilities to attend regular lectures, this is effectively tuition by correspondence.
In this case the decision was to employ technology for achieving different tasks. The approach meant more to break the constraints of space rather than these of time.
It was decided to try to develop international collaboration, to exchange experience and learning without expensive travelling costs.
The next step was to find “hot” topics that would be interesting for all parties and of course these courses had to fit to the whole curriculum of bachelor studies in each of the different universities. Finally the development of a course in urban geography “Transfor-mation of Urban Space” was chosen to be the first to be prepared. Later another course in regional geography “Region Development and Region Policy” was produced.
Organisational aspects involved team meetings in Finland where all participating persons from each of the universities involved were presented with the idea and main principles of distant learning and audio conferencing. Some practice of audio lecturing was given for tutors. Also the course content was discussed and established (agreements concerning main topics that were to be studied were made). However later experience has shown that these meetings were not critical, particularly if there is one leading department, whose experts prepare the course content and takes all the organisational responsibilities and the other university partners accept this content and the design of the course. On the other hand collaboration happens more smoothly if all the persons involved know each other through face-to-face meetings and not just virtually.
Design of the course was prepared both by the experts of distance education and geographers. Though the main initiators of the course were distance education centres, later their involvement in course development was not so dominant and the role of the geographers increased.
Departments of distance education in the universities were responsible for the technical aspects of the project – they provided the equipment necessary for audio conferencing and web based tools. The general ideology of the course was determined by the ideas and theories then dominating in distance education. Audioconferencing was seen as a very good opportunity, because of five reasons mentioned by Michael G. Moor: “Audio conferencing is a learner – centred, relatively inexpensive, robust and flexible medium, that can be well integrated with other media in a distance education program” (Moore, 1994). It was perceived then that adoption of high cost delivery systems was giving way to a new trend towards an appropriate selection of a delivery systems based on course content, course design and intended audience.
(Hardy and Olicott, 1995). So it was decided that audio conferencing should just be an additional learning tool, while the main accent was related to active self-education and communication via the Internet. Later experiences showed that the proportion of audio lectures could have been reduced even further.
The learning process
The learning system of the course was rather complicated and involved many types of learning processes. The main processes involved were:
• Tutoring (not lecturing, just helping students);
• Audio meetings:
• Independent learning;
• Internet based learning.
• Group work (preparing common projects)
Every University formed a group of students wishing to learn the subject. It of course was not a compulsory discipline and a good knowledge of English was a neces-sity. Hence the formation of the group of 6–12 persons, the recommended student group size in every university, was not an easy task bearing in mind the rather small total number of students in our department.
Promotion of the idea of the course among the students played an important role and this was one of the tasks of a tutor. Among the other tasks of the tutor were, to lead conversation during audio conferences, assist students with their assignments, to present study material, to explain Internet-based learning environment but not to give lectures. Notwithstanding that tutor doesn’t have to give lectures their role remained very important and active, requiring a lot of time. Though there were no lectures planned, in reality meetings with the student group took place every second week and sometimes they held very strong resemblance to the usual lectures or seminars. Actually good tutoring was essential in this case and the tutor involved needed to be a well motivated person interested in new technology like the Internet and the subject, urban geography in this case.
Independent learning was the main way of that the students gained knowledge. It was based on study materials, which were provided for the students. Generally these involved copied articles, relevant chapters from different issues of full textbooks, which played the role as a main source of information for students. In our case learning mate-rial were collected by experts from the leading university and sent to the tutor via mail or sometimes by fax. Experience has shown that in some more complicated cases, like controversial, more difficult topics, lecturing would have helped students to better under-stand the subject. So lecturing could also be involved in this learning system. Anyway, the course requires independent work from students collecting additional information on the course subjects and especially preparing project work. The given material concentrated on general theory, main trends in the urban or regional geography, so students had to find information concerning their own city or region to supplement it.
The number of audio meetings varied from 7 in 1999 to 4 in 2004. Firstly audio confer-ences used to take place every two weeks, lasting two academic hours, but it became evident that the attention needed for this type of learning was too great. Two hours of listening to even very interesting topics in English was too difficult for the students and in general audio conferences became more a tool for discussion and presentation than for delivering lectures. At the beginning five audio meetings were devoted for lectures (including of course some discussion on related topic) and there were two for the presen-tation of projects prepared by different student groups. Finally there were only two short
audio lectures – one for presenting the general ideas of the topic and second for explaining some special cases, both were given by an expert on the subject. And the next two were devoted for presenting project work, which were to be placed on the Internet.
Internet based learning was organised by our colleagues from Turku University.
Web course tools were used for communication between students, tutors and experts.
All written material was presented there as well as useful links and other related infor-mation so every participant was able to use it and to give their remarks. WebCT also provided space for presenting project work. Students had to use the site several times each week to find out the tasks given by experts or answer questions given by other participants. The problems with Internet accessibility in Baltic countries as well as rather poor computer skills were the main difficulties at the beginning of the project.
There were two assignments to be made during the course. First of all local groups prepared project work concerning some local case, placed it on WebCT and presented it during the audio conference trying to compare different cities. Usually every student had specific tasks depending on their skills. Students had to collect information, make analyses, to write in English, to put the presentation on Internet and to present it during the audio conference. Then groups were formed from students from the different participating universities and they had to work together on some specific problem in the different cities. Such international collaboration was very interesting for students though the organisation of work was rather difficult. The number of students involved from the various countries differed considerably, as well as their skills and motivation so the results were very unpredictable and the quality of the project work was very different. Finally, after two years the idea of working in international groups was rejected purely because of these reasons.
Conclusion
When finalising the description of this experience it also should be mentioned that in general such ways of learning opens a lot of new opportunities for students and teachers. Students can obtain various skills in very different fields – understanding geographical subjects, developing communicational abilities, improving English, group work skills, and so on. Also in some cases it is an appropriate alternative to expensive international travel. On the other hand there were some organisational issues, for example it is rather difficult to include such subjects into the regular curriculum, because it depends on the will of many participants, finding finances for such activities and there is always some uncertainty concerning sustaining the activities. However notwithstanding some negative features every participant agreed that, in general, such methods of learning enrich the usual ways of learning very effectively. The experiences, which students and tutors obtained, helped everybody to improve their geographical knowledge and learning skills.
References
1. HARDY D.W. AND OLCOTT D.JR. 1995. Audio conferencing and the adult learner:
Strategies for effective practice. The American Journal of Distance Education 9 (1).
2. MOORE M.G. 1994. Audioconferencing in distant education. The American Journal of Distance Education 8 (1): 1−4.