Continuous Education, Life-long Learning

Lillemor Lewan, Lund University
Helgonavägen 3B, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden
Fax: +46-46-222 45 39
E-mail: lillemor.lewan@zoofys.lu.se

Continuous education and life-long-learning is of importance for recently graduated students, and professionals as well as for university professors. Specialisation through research for lecturers is no longer sufficient when students qualify in modern teaching technologies and learn about possibilities on the Internet.

Many universities offer their teaching staff professional courses for development of new teaching systems.

The aim of the Socrates programme and EuroBio is the Europeanisation of higher education. Student mobility is one possibility, but only a minority of students can study abroad. New possibilities are offered by IT-based learning. A student may remain at his home university and still study abroad by interactive distance courses offered by universities in other countries. Such teaching demands much new knowledge, new didactics and new organisation at universities.

My home university in Lund, Sweden has

• a Centre for Teaching and Learning(UPC),
• a Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITU),
• a Computing Centre (LDC), esp. Consulting and Technical Support,
• an Office for Continuing and Distance Education.

Professors are invited to these centres for learning about new methods and new technologies and for development of new courses at their departments. Just now there is strong support from the Rectorate to the Office for Continuing and Distance Education based on co-operation with the Centre for Information Technology in Education. It is reported that students engaged in distance learning by the Internet make good progress, and this kind of teaching is even used on campus. It offers new means of organisation of teaching, learning and knowledge. New ways of learning also demand new methods in examination, and new organisation of students. These tasks certainly make life-long learning necessary among professors.

In order to give an illustration I constructed a preliminary Internet based course:

"Topics in Biology" with subtitle "An interdisciplinary approach. Life-long learning for university professors". The course uses the Lund University Virtual Interactive Tool (Luvit). It demands JAVA script and Netscape 4.5 or an equivalent system.

Luvit is continuously upgraded and used on campus and in distance education within the university. Luvit also has a commercial branch selling specially designed courses on the market. Satellite transmission is used for long distance education. Have a look at the list of courses (http://luvit1.fov.lu.se). Some are real, others are just experimental and made for training. You can still find "Topics in Biology" in the list. Press GO and press register as a guest. You will be given a user name and a user identity. Note these and use them for entrance to the introduction of the course. If you then send me an e-mail (lillemor.lewan@zoofys.lu.se) I can upgrade you to a "student" on the course for access to more information.

The Luvit system and "Topics in Biology" give some idea about possibilities to use the Internet in university education. You can have a class with students from all over the world. Special requirements for access to the course can be introduced, and thus those who don’t qualify can be excluded Of course you must require registration at your university for participation and perhaps paying of fees. As a teacher you can publish documents, advice course books and give links to good web sites. Students can send you personal messages and theses, but these can also be published for general access among participants. You can make a time schedule for discussions through the Forum function or use the Café function for more occasional chats. Personal messages can be sent or distributed more generally to everybody in the class.

Internet based teaching is new, but it is already in use and most probably there will be a rapid evolution of different systems. Biology is no exception., and we have to prepare for new agreements about cooperation in teaching, assignments and assessment of students, examination and credits. We also have to learn how to use the technical facilities and how to design good quality teaching.