1 the concept of virtual university
Although the research on virtual university is not uncommon, the theoretical circle has not yet reached a consensus on the definition of virtual university. Distance education institutions under the network environment are usually called virtual universities or "online universities". Krauth( 1999) in the United States stated that "all courses and training programs of online universities are provided through the Internet or the World Wide Web, such as the online campus of the University of Phoenix in the United States". 1Khan(2000) thinks: "Virtual universities can have their own courses and make comprehensive use of the courses of other institutions." 2Aoki and Pogroszewski (1998) proposed "a higher education institution that provides learners with learning content and learning support services, and provides teachers with resources and tools needed for teaching and scientific research, all or mainly through network communication technology." Daniel, former president of the Open University of the United Kingdom and now Director-General of Education of UNESCO, pointed out, "At present, the concept of virtual university is to unite existing universities into a new network giant university through electronic means, with a more flexible structure and many relatively independent nodes." four
The definition of "virtual university" in the seventh issue of Higher Education Digest (1997) is: "The so-called virtual university refers to a school-running entity with the characteristics and functions of traditional universities under the guidance of virtual ideas and the use of virtual technology on the Internet, which does not consume real educational resources and energy. Virtual technology refers to an operation method and skill using information technology, including intelligent computer system, multimedia technology, satellite communication technology, photoelectric system integration technology, network technology and information collection, transmission and processing technology. -simulating the real environment in a false way, and taking the integration of Internet, satellite communication network and telecommunication network as the carrier to achieve the predetermined goal. Virtual concept refers to many viewpoints formed by people when virtual technology is applied to politics, economy, science and technology, culture, education and other fields, including accepted, unacceptable and opposed viewpoints, systematic and unsystematic viewpoints and so on. " five
Although the above viewpoints emphasize the idea of building a virtual university by using information technology and modern educational concepts, they ignore the idea of being an organizational alliance to participate in market competition.
"Virtual University", also called virtual education alliance, is an education alliance linked by information technology in order to seize and take advantage of the rapidly changing opportunities in the education market. This virtual education alliance is an organization with time limit (temporary and unfixed), interdependence, mutual trust and cooperation. "This virtual education alliance is a positive response to the changes in the education market and the greater development of higher education. Therefore, "virtual education alliance is actually a dynamic combination community of educational resources development based on knowledge sharing, which is organized by means of resource optimization. In the era of rapid development of knowledge economy, it responds quickly to the continuous updating of knowledge and information. This definition emphasizes the main feature of virtual university as a virtual organization, that is, strategic alliance. However, there is still a lack of description of the educational characteristics of virtual universities.
American scholars Wolf and Johnstone gave a more detailed definition and classification of various public institutions participating in virtual teaching in 1999, as shown in table 1:
Table 1, Virtual Teaching in Public Institutions and Its Connotation
The name and connotation of serial number virtual teaching public institution
1 There is no institution in the virtual university/college that can award degrees.
2 Virtual University Consortium refers to an educational institution that can provide online academic education and provide interconnected centralized or decentralized student services among members of the Consortium.
3 Academic Services Consortium can provide online academic education and centralized or decentralized student services without degree awarding, but there is no educational institution interconnection among members of the Consortium.
University Information Alliance is an educational institution, which does not award degrees or provide centralized or parallel services to students, but can provide electronic academic education.
The virtual program can award degrees, but it does not need to reach the traditional campus, and still provides face-to-face service. Traditional educational institutions provide academic education.
6 educational institutions that have obtained certificates issued by virtual business certification institutions, but have no credits.
There are some traditional certification bodies of electronic courses. Some electronic courses can be used to grant credits, but educational institutions cannot obtain degrees through the electronic courses provided.
seven
According to the above definition and classification, among the so-called public virtual cooperative institutions in the existing 19 in the United States, only the Western Governor's University belongs to the only real virtual university. This definition or classification of virtual universities clearly defines virtual universities and other virtual educational institutions, but it will make the concept of virtual universities too narrow and not universal, and will be restricted in the study of the establishment and development of virtual universities.
To sum up, the so-called virtual university is more than two independent schools with higher education qualifications. In order to meet the market's demand for talent cultivation or training and expand the provision of educational services to the market, a dynamic alliance organization form of higher education is formed in a certain period of time. Under the condition of having sufficient information, partners are determined from many organizations through certain choices. Quickly form its unique advantages in the field of higher education (especially in the field of distance higher education), realize the integration and optimal utilization of internal and external resources, and complete educational functions that a single higher education institution cannot undertake with strong structural cost advantages and flexibility, such as the integration of professional education resources, the development and application of learning support service system platform, and the operation and monitoring of distance education management system. And can complete the whole process of academic education.
According to this definition, modern institutions at home and abroad that use modern educational information technology platforms to provide higher education services and higher education in the form of cooperative alliances can all be classified as virtual universities.
2 the characteristics of virtual universities and their significant differences from existing physical universities
Virtual university and physical university are different in school-running objectives, school-running forms, operation methods and management methods, especially in school-running concepts. The virtual university not only has the characteristics of incomplete organizational function, networked organizational structure, specialized resources, discrete existing forms, cooperative operation, flexible response to the market and integrated operation results, but also has the characteristics of flexibility in running a school facing the education market, diversity in education, agility in responding to the market, singleness of institutions, profitability in running a school, networking in management and virtuality in teaching.
A. Flexibility in running schools
The goal of running a virtual university is basically to aim at the most urgently needed talents in the market, focusing on adult education, expanding knowledge, broadening professional fields, improving professional skills and academic level, obtaining high-level academic diplomas and providing educational opportunities for those who have been rapidly employed to meet the needs of the market. These employees, especially the disadvantaged groups in society, can get a good education with less tuition at any convenient time without leaving home or living environment, find an ideal career through education, and gain the ability to grow and the skills to deal with the world.
Therefore, the virtual university takes education as the core, and adjusts the training direction, specialty setting and teaching plan at any time according to the demand of the education market, and adjusts the education level, curriculum setting and teaching arrangement at any time. Compared with physical universities, virtual universities are weak in planning and flexible.
B. Diversity of education
The virtual university mainly operates through satellites and computer networks, which makes the virtual university not limited by time and space, provides learners with the ability to learn at any time, anywhere and in any way, and makes the virtual environment more open, independent and personalized. Therefore, the forms of education provided by virtual universities are very diverse, from academic education to non-academic education, from professional education to non-professional education, from vocational training to basic quality education, from holistic education to single course teaching. Virtual universities can also provide the right to award dozens of degrees from undergraduates to doctoral students.
C. Agile response to the market
Virtual university cooperates with well-known society and well-known entity universities to concentrate the core competence of various schools, and entity universities provide educational resources. Therefore, it can quickly respond to the talent training urgently needed by the market society.
D. Simple mechanism
Virtual university is a form of modern distance education supported by modern information technology, and most of the traditional organizational structure has been replaced by computers. Therefore, virtual universities have almost no campus and walls, but they all have their own main campus (perhaps an office building) and several teaching networks distributed all over the country (perhaps a small office building next to the expressway), and a set of education management systems related to students, teachers, classrooms, exams, degree certificates and so on. Although virtual universities may not have campus life and academic activities, or even fixed teachers and specialized libraries, they have excellent network or satellite systems, through which students can easily search and obtain course materials and consult books and periodicals in libraries around the world.
E. Running a school for profit
While pursuing social benefits, virtual universities also aim at making profits and obtaining economic benefits. The operation of virtual university depends on the number of students, the study time of students, the hours of courses, the services provided for students and the educational assistance provided to social public institutions in order to obtain economic benefits.
F. Management networking
The members of virtual university alliance have different geographical locations, and the geographical locations of students and schools are different. School management is carried out through the network. For example, in the management of learning process, students begin to apply for virtual university learning, that is, they complete all learning processes through the network, including registration, payment, class, doing experiments, completing homework, answering questions, taking exams, submitting papers, applying for financial aid, receiving scholarships, obtaining diplomas, attending graduation ceremonies, etc. Establish a support service management platform for the learning process to ensure the smooth completion of students' learning. The management of teachers and educational administration is also carried out through the network management platform. The scope of management is different from that of physical universities, because of the virtual organizational structure, that is, the general campus (or main campus) and branch campuses (or teaching centers).
G. Virtual nature of teaching
The teaching process of virtual university is carried out on satellite video or computer network. Teachers and students can't face each other at close range. Students can attend classes in real time and obtain teaching resources in non-real time. The interaction between teachers and students must also be transmitted through the network. In the virtual university, students not only get teaching resources, but also get teaching support services to assist learning. Therefore, the teaching process of virtual university shows its virtual characteristics.
3 the status quo of virtual universities
Virtual universities abroad, especially in the United States, have developed for more than ten years. The University of Phoenix (1989) launched the first computer-based education and teaching system, namely online teaching plan, which gradually developed into the online campus of the University of Phoenix. Jones International University was established in May 1993, and began to award bachelor's and master's degrees in business communication in May 1995. 1On March 5th, 999, Jones International University was officially recognized by the National Education Accreditation Board (NCA), becoming the first university in the United States to teach entirely through the Internet and the first in American history. Western Governor University was born in 1995. The plan to establish a virtual university was signed by 10 western states in advance, and now it has developed into a university jointly managed by 19 western state governors association. The National University of Technology was established in Colorado on 1984, and began to transmit a large number of academic courses to the whole country from a university alliance composed of more than 50 universities by satellite, among which 7 universities ranked in the top 25 in American News and World Report (engineering postgraduate courses). nine
Domestic virtual universities have also begun to appear. At present, there are 153 majors in 67 universities approved by the state to carry out modern distance education pilot projects, covering 10 disciplines. By the end of 2003, the total number of students in school reached 2.3 million. 10 has formed a situation of developing modern distance education in various disciplines, expanding the scale of higher education, improving the quality of higher education and promoting the modernization of higher education, which has laid a certain foundation for the formation, establishment and development of virtual universities in China.
3. 1 Modern Distance Education and Virtual University Construction
No matter the start-up or start-up of foreign or domestic virtual universities, they all appear in the form of modern distance education. Therefore, modern distance education is a prelude to the construction of virtual universities.
A. A teaching platform supporting the virtual university has been established.
Through independent development or cooperation with information enterprises, the pilot colleges and universities have developed 94 teaching management platforms supporting distance education, built a number of large-scale distance education websites, and put them into practice in online education. Most pilot universities have opened up their own unique channels of information transmission and interaction by cooperating with China Telecom, China Unicom, Education and Research Network, China Education Television or satellite companies. 1 1
Through pilot exploration, a variety of modern distance education teaching modes, such as classroom teaching mode based on network, personalized autonomous learning mode, collaborative learning mode and case teaching mode, have been initially established, and good results have been achieved.
The field of educational technology is also actively studying the reform of teaching mode, the network operation mechanism of each link in the teaching process, the production standards and norms of educational resources, and the evaluation standard index system of educational resources and teaching process.
B. An industrial alliance was established.
The pilot colleges and universities have carried out extensive cooperation with the society and information enterprises, which has attracted the capital and technical investment of the society and enterprises in online education and promoted the development of the educational information industry. Among them, 53% pilot universities and enterprises jointly invest in online education, giving full play to the advantages of enterprises in capital technology and operating mechanism. Through school-enterprise cooperation, the pilot colleges and universities can not only follow up and apply the latest information technology in time, but also introduce the industrial operation mechanism, enhance the cost consciousness and efficiency consciousness of running schools, and begin to develop towards the industrialization of online education.
C. Established educational resources
In 2000, the Ministry of Education launched the "New Century Network Course Construction Project", with an investment of more than 40 million yuan, built more than 300 basic and demonstration network courses, case bases, test banks and course platforms, and implemented the network course quality certification project, in which tens of thousands of teachers from more than 100 universities participated. According to the subject advantages and teaching characteristics of pilot universities, a number of online teaching resource banks, material banks, online courses and teaching courseware with independent intellectual property rights of universities have been developed by means of self-construction, co-construction and information technology industry cooperation. By the end of 2002, 67 pilot universities had developed 8,557 online courses and 9,338 computer courseware, 92% of which could be used in public network or LAN environment.
The construction of educational resources accelerates the integration and utilization of high-quality educational resources in schools, which is not only suitable for off-campus distance education, but also suitable for full-time undergraduate, junior college and graduate education in schools. The development of modern distance education has effectively promoted the enthusiasm of teachers to apply modern educational technology and the change of educational concepts.
D. the quality management system of online education has been established.
Through the pilot practice of distance education, a three-level management system of national, provincial and pilot universities has been formed. The Ministry of Education has formulated relevant management documents and management operation procedures to standardize the school-running behavior of pilot universities. For example, the Ministry of Education's "Several Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Online Education Colleges and Improving the Teaching Quality", "Principles Opinions on the Construction and Management of Off-campus Learning Centers (Points) of Modern Distance Education", "Interim Measures for the Administration of Educational Websites and Online Schools" and other documents, as well as the annual report inspection system. Organize experts to study the quality assurance and certification system and evaluation system of online education. The education administrative departments of all provinces and cities are responsible for the examination and approval and management of the off-campus learning center of distance education, and check and evaluate the teaching situation of enrollment, publicity and off-campus learning center. Pilot colleges and universities gradually establish and improve online education institutions and establish relevant rules and regulations. On June 5438+ 10, 2004, the Ministry of Education issued a notice, and decided to conduct a unified examination for all online distance education students enrolled in pilot universities after March 2004 1 from 2005. It is decided to implement a national unified examination for some public courses of online education students in pilot universities of modern distance education. This is an important measure for the Ministry of Education to improve the quality of online education and social reputation.
The pilot of modern distance education has built a basic platform for the operation of virtual university, which makes the start of virtual university logical.
3.2 Co-construction and sharing of educational resources and virtual universities
The imbalance between the construction and development of educational resources among the pilot universities of modern distance education in China and between the eastern and western regions has prompted the state to advocate and actively promote the establishment of a co-construction and sharing mechanism of educational resources, improve the utilization rate of high-quality educational resources, avoid low-level redundant construction and save the development cost of educational resources.
A. Establishing alliances or cooperative organizations
67 pilot universities have set up modern distance education cooperation groups; The Experimental College of Agriculture and Forestry University has established the Cooperation Group of Experimental College of Agriculture and Forestry University; The National Normal University established the "National Teacher Education Network Alliance". The "Shanghai Cooperation Group of Modern Distance Education Pilot Universities of the Ministry of Education" was established among the pilot universities in Shanghai, and the joint enrollment of six online colleges was implemented. Online course for students from Shipai 6 School in Guangzhou to choose credits from each other; Shanghai established Distance Education Group. In August 2004, the heads of online education colleges of eight universities in the Yangtze River Delta region jointly signed the Memorandum of Sharing Distance Education Resources among Universities in the Yangtze River Delta Region (Taihu Declaration) in Wuxi. They jointly advocate the establishment and improvement of a new mechanism of resource sharing, policy support, rule convergence and service system co-construction in pilot universities in the Yangtze River Delta region, and gradually form a distance education resource community with unified standards, distinctive features and strong brand effect, and finally realize the goal of mutual recognition of credits based on distance education resource sharing. 12
Various industries or local alliances or cooperative groups have strengthened cooperation in resource co-construction and sharing, and put the focus of curriculum resources co-construction on the development of high-quality courseware.
B. Joint development projects
In the process of distance education pilot, the state has invested a lot of money in the overall research of distance education. For example, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Xi Jiaotong University jointly took the lead in undertaking the major project of "Integration of Key Technologies and Supporting Service System of Distance Education with Tiandi Net" of the Ministry of Education, and implemented the key sub-project-demonstration project of distance education based on Tiandi Net, that is, the project of "mutual course selection, mutual recognition of credits and joint running of schools", aiming at using the self-developed Tiandi Net distance education platform to carry out inter-school course selection, mutual recognition of credits and joint running of schools, and exploring a new mode of joint running of online education. The project was first implemented in Shanghai Jiaotong University, Xi Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University. Through cooperation in distance education, high-quality educational resources (such as Ningxia University and Tibet University) were delivered to the western region. The project has achieved milestone results. Recently, the state plans to set up special research in constructing lifelong education system, supporting distance education in economically underdeveloped areas, developing soft environment construction of distance education, establishing quality assurance system of distance education, establishing teaching resource sharing mechanism, cutting-edge technology of distance education, supporting service system of distance learning, sustainable development of distance education, theory and discipline construction of distance education, and training of distance education practitioners. , and will jointly develop and study through a number of universities.
According to the concept of virtual university, this kind of co-construction and sharing of educational resources in physical universities has become the embryonic form of virtual universities, and virtual universities have started.
refer to
1Krauth。 B( 1999)。 Ten-year teaching strategy. In: G.P. Connich (editor. ), a guide for distance learners. Upper Sadr River, New Jersey: Prettishall
2Khan(2000), Web-based training. Cleaves, Englewood, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.
3Aoki, K.&Bo Graucher, D( 1998). Virtual University Reference Model: A Guide to Providing Education and Support Services to Distance Learners, Online Journal of Distance Learning Management, 1(3)
4 Ding Xingfu, Micro Theory of Distance Education, China Distance Education 200 1.2,
5 Journal of Guangzhou Medical College, 1997 Vol.25, No.6 P88.
6 Zhou Sheng/Shi Yunding. Research on the Network Architecture of Building Enterprise Virtual Education Alliance, Open Education Research 200 1.5, (No.33) p42
7Douglas R.McCoy, Christine K.Sorensen, Policy Views of Some Virtual Universities in America, Distance Education Review Quarterly, Volume 4 (2),2003, Page 89- 107, ISSN1528-351.
8 Policy Prospects of Some Virtual Universities in America, Distance Education Quarterly, No.4, 2003.
9 Research on co-construction and sharing of online education resources in Ding Xin, Ma Hongliang and abroad, to be published.
10 Proposal of the Third Session of the Tenth Zhi Gong Dang 00 17: Proposal on Modern Distance Education in China, China Education and Scientific Research Computer Network,/2005031/3130817. shtml。
1 1 Wu, develop actively, standardize management, strengthen service and ensure quality-speech at the seminar of modern distance education in national colleges and universities, 2003, Beijing.
12 ding xingfu, distance education in China: the test of transformation, China education and scientific research computer network,/2005025/3129453.shtml.