Virtual University - History

History

The defining characteristic of all forms and generations of distance education is the separation of student and teacher in time and space. Distance education can be seen as the precursor to online learning. Before the advent of virtual universities, many higher education institutions offered some distance education through print-based correspondence courses. These courses were often referred to as a “course in a box”. These have been developed so that students can obtain almost immediate feedback from professors and online tutors through e-mails or online discussions.

When the term “virtual” was first coined in the computational sense, it applied to things that were simulated by the computer, like virtual memory. Over time, the adjective has been applied to things that physically exist and are created or carried on by means of computers.

The Open University in the United Kingdom was the world’s first successful distance teaching university. It was founded in the 1960s on the belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to attend campus universities. The idea for a “wireless university” was first discussed at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) by the educationalist and historian J.C. Stobbart. From these early beginnings more ideas came forth until finally the Labour Party under the leadership of Harold Wilson formed an advisory committee to establish an Open University.

With the goal of bringing higher education to all those who wanted to access it, the committee came up with various scenarios before settling on the name Open University. The first idea floated in the UK was to have a “teleuniversity” which would combine broadcast lectures with correspondence texts and visits to conventional universities. In the “teleuniversity” scenario courses are taught on the radio and television and in fact many universities adopted the use of this technology for their distance education courses. The name “teleuniversity” morphed into the "University of Air” which still had the same goal of reaching the lower income groups who did not have access to higher education. The name “University of Air” did not stick and by the time the first students were admitted in January 1971 the name had become what it is today “Open University”. OU proved that it was possible to teach university-level courses to students at a distance.

By 1980, total student numbers at OU had reached 70,000 and some 6,000 people were graduating each year. The 1980s saw increased expansion continue as more courses and subject areas were introduced; as the importance of career development grew, so the university began to offer professional training courses alongside its academic programmes. By the mid-nineties the OU was using the internet. As of 2008, more than 180,000 students were interacting with OU online from home.

The idea of a virtual university as an institution that used computers and telecommunications instead of buildings and transport to bring students and teachers together for university courses was first published in works like "De-Schooling Society" by Ivan Illich that introduced the concept of the use of computer networks as switchboards for learning, in 1970. In 1971 George Kasey, a media(activist)ethicist, delivered a series of lectures on "the Philosophy of Communications De-Design" under the sponsorship of Phil Jacklin PhD, professor at University of California San Jose, a member of "The (San Francisco)Bay Area Committee for Open Media and Public Access." The lectures contained the theoretical outlines for use of telecommunications and media for de-schooling and de-design of mainstream education and an alternative Virtual Free University system. By 1972 George Kasey established "Media Free Times - periodical Multimedia Random Sampling of Anarchic Communications Art" a prototype for remote learning with the use of "multi-media periodicals," that are now commonly referred to as "web pages". In 1995 by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham in their book "In Search Of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society" (London and New York, Routledge). It was based on a joint research project at Victoria University of Wellington that ran from 1986-1996. Called the virtual class laboratory it used dedicated telecommunication systems to make it possible for students to attend class virtually or physically and was at first supported by a number of telecommunication organisations. Its purpose was to seek the critical factors in using ICT for university level education. In 1992 the virtual class lab moved onto the Internet and in 1995 The Open University of Catalonia became the first virtual university totally dependent on telecommunications and computers.

A number of other universities were involved in the late eighties in pioneering initiatives and experiments were conducted between Victoria University in New Zealand, the University of Hawaii, Ohio State University and Waseda University to try and conduct classes and courses at an international level via telecommunications. This led to the concept of a Global Virtual University.