Asia-Pacific universities host first region-wide course in cyberspace
Teleconferenced seminar stretches across time zones, date lines
By RALF KIRCHER
Asian Institute of Technology
BANGKOK , Thailand -- 'Good evening,' an American woman greeted a group gathered in an auditorium at 11:15 on a Friday morning at the Asian Institute of Technology's Pathumthani campus.
Christina Higa's commonplace greeting might seem at first anachronistic. Outside it was a sunny Bangkok morning, but from where Higa sat, it was in fact evening, and it was not yet Friday. Higa spoke live from a room at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to counterparts and students watching screens around the Pacific Rim : simultaneously in five countries, five time zones and on two different days of the week.
Such is the nature of information and communications technology in the growing global village of cyberspace, where time zones and international date lines do not exist. While teleconferencing on a business level and on a one-on-one basis has become more or less commonplace, and while Higa's opening remarks marked the final installment of a seminar course in environmental studies, the method behind the course may have marked the dawn of a new age in higher education.
As part of the Asia Pacific Initiative, faculty and staff from the Asian Institute of Technology, the University of Hawaii, Keio and United Nations universities in Tokyo, the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, and the National University of Samoa in Apia, Samoa, teamed up to conduct a joint graduate-level class entirely through interactive teleconferencing.
Organizers say it is the first class like it - where students and lecturers from a number of universities throughout the Pacific region were able to interact with each other in real time through existing low-cost Internet technology.
'We are not just talking about technical innovation,' said Prof. Kimio Uno from his seat in Tokyo 's Keio University . 'We are talking about institutional innovation.'
Known as the Advanced Seminar in International Environmental Studies, the course came about with the help of 15 participating agencies and two dozen or so lecturers, each of whom was able to lecture from the convenience of his home campus during 15 weekly sessions held since September 2005.
About 40 students were enrolled, and it was offered for credit by two of the participating universities. At AIT, where it was not offered for credit, the seminar typically had an attendance of 10 to 15 students even during the busy examination period, said Prof. Peter Haddawy, AIT's vice president for education.
AIT's teaching contribution consisted of Prof. Tess Del Rossario, who recently left the faculty, and Prof. Mukand Babel, who lectured on international water resources management with regard to sustainable development.
'The participation from lecturers from AIT may not have been as high as it could have been,' said Jean-Philippe Thouard, who coordinated the seminar for AIT. 'One reason may be their lack of familiarity with this new teaching medium, and we intend to improve that in the future.'
Also in the future, AIT and other institutions will likely offer similar seminars for university credit.
'Such a seminar would simply have been nearly impossible and cost prohibitive to organize by traditional means,' Prof. Haddawy said. 'I see great potential for the further development of similar seminars in the future.'
This pilot course covered such environmental planning topics as: multilateral environmental agreements; international, regional and local policies and management; marine biodiversity; coastal zone research and management; waste and pollution issues; and sustainable development and resources. All of the topics are on the forefront of environmental education in the different institutions in their respective countries, and the course was able to draw upon a wealth of expertise that would in any other format be too costly or nearly impossible in terms of scheduling.
'We get the full course with having to provide only two or three of the lecturers,' Thouard said.
The format, low cost and relative ease of offering such a course lends itself to other subjects and to increased participation of more isolated institutions.
One suggested topic is disaster engineering and mitigation, 'a subject for which this international forum would be particularly well suited,' Prof. Haddawy said.
In his remarks from Bangkok , Thouard suggested extending a similar seminar to new partner universities, perhaps in India and particularly in the Greater Mekong Subregion. It is there, he said, 'that emerging universities have lecturers and researchers who are very interested in conducting research ... but who are often frustrated by isolation and lack of resources. AIT would be very much ready to help facilitate the extension of our partnership to one or more additional institutions from the GMS outside of Thailand .'
One of the greatest benefits of such a course is that it cuts the time from research to classroom, said Prof. Uno.
It is only recently that technologies have improved enough that a seminar like this is possible over the Internet. As a casual user of the Internet, it is sometimes easy to forget the entire system relies upon interconnected regional networks - actual physical hardware and a communications infrastructure. In the Asia-Pacific region those networks could not handle the volume of information required for such a course, as would networks in, say, the United States or Europe . Thouard says that situation is quickly changing.
'It allows us to put the technology in the background,' he said. Not that the technology is perfect: During the final session, the video froze periodically and the sound quality is not what it would be having the speaker in the same room.
'You have to adapt your teaching a bit to the format,' Thouard admitted.
There are other human challenges as well, noted Higa. Consideration of how tuition will be paid for the multi-institutional courses and the standardization of quality are two issues still to be reckoned with. Coordinating without face-to-face meetings, consensus in a timely manner, intercultural miscommunication and scheduling were just a few of the headaches that went into organization of the pilot course.
Many of those practical concerns were alleviated by an open source system known as 'Moodle' that allows online sharing of traditional course materials, PowerPoint presentations, professors' e-mail addresses, online quizzes and video recordings of previous lectures among other course-related information.
'The key factor is cooperation and collaboration among institutions,' said Dr. Norman Okamura of the University of Hawaii .
Prof. Hans van Ginkel, rector of United Nations University and the vice chairman of AIT's board of trustees, sat in as an observer in the final seminar.
'I think it's an exciting moment to see how well the system works,' Prof. van Ginkel said. 'It's quite clear the system can be effective.'
He said a pilot project like this and what follows should encourage other universities to follow suit.
'We have to work much harder in creating global citizens,' Prof. van Ginkel said, and future courses that draw upon the academic resources of multiple institutions are laying the groundwork to do just that.
Ralf Kircher is News and Media Specialist for the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand .