French Polishers

We are in the second day here at the Polish Virtual Universities Conference in Warsaw. Ronan Chabauty (FIED – Federation Interuniversitaire d’Enseignment a Distance: A French Distance Teaching Organisation) talked about France’s national conceptualisation of distance education, which is the one the French Education ministry has approved for funding. His keynote involved discussion of the old quadrant model of ‘same time, different place, etc’. He espouses two classic typologies, one of which is the competence model of enriched learning through technology, whilst the other takes a location dependent position of ‘reduced face to face’ and ‘quasi non-existent face to face’. I'm not sure what he meant by this, as there was no time for elaboration. However, I think this essentially means that distance teaching for the French is an alternative means to face to face and as Ronan said, 'has to be distinguishable from face to face teaching'. A little 'old school' I thought and perhaps not acknowledging some of the new technologies that are reducing conceptions of what distance actually is. I had to get up on my hind legs and I ask him what his position was then, on the blended approaches that are so prevalent in the UK? He replied that students who are away from the campus receive the 'enriched learning through technology' delivery - not so much a distinction then, as an alternative method of delivery. Students are changing and we need to change our delivery methods, he said, which first involves changing the minds of colleagues. A perennial problem which I think affects all institutions.

Ronan concluded his talk by saying that in France (and also most other places) there is still a great amount of work to do to ensure that anyone and everyone can study from wherever they are located and therefore participate fully in lifelong learning.

Oh, and by the way, the photo above is one I took last night as the sun was setting on the old Stare Miesto (old city) of Warsaw.