Workshop B - Session 3

Title: Using Broadcasting and the New Technologies - Technologies and Adult Learning Chair: Stephen McNair, NIACE, UK Thomas Kragh, Centre for Technology Assisted Education, Denmark

CTU, The Danish National Centre for Technology Supported Learning, is a national knowledge centre developed and managed by the Ministry of Education. It administers a fund amounting to DKK 100m and supports projects (135 as of today) which use new technologies and educational techniques.

It publishes the magazine "CTU News" (CTU-Nyt) in Danish and English and so disseminates information on requirements for institutional adaptation. But it also provides advice to authorities, administrators and institutions and launches strategic initiatives.

We maintian the profile of technology supported learning through commissioning comprehensive reports and analyses, and organising conferences, seminars and workshops. We also present papers at national and international gatherings and facilitate international contacts.

We have a role in demonstrating new technologies and materials for use in education, and, on a practical side, we rent out equipment for video conferences.

Adult learning and broadcasting

We feel that broadcasting has a vital role to play in Adult Education. It is something that we all know is possible to do; we know how to do it, and broadcasting has the advantage of being a very flexible tool with many strategic advantages. This is one important part of using new technologies, but there is also a demand for development of new pedagogical, and new administrative procedures.

There are of course problems to overcome, for example, copyright, in the matter of the origination and use of materials. There is also a question of money, we need economy models of equipment and of distribution. And there is a problem of getting the schools to accept the changes new technology implies. Few leading schools are innovators. So the question is, how can we spread the use of new techologies in this context?

In Denmark we had a CTU-project, which involved a network of 8 vocational training centers/schools. They haveteamed up in an effort to deliver up-to-date education in environmental issues. With the use of Internet and desktop video-conferencing they deliver education, and thereby reduce the cost of the resources needed to deliver education in this fast moving area.

People take this education and they take it in their free time. They do not have to travel to work. It is training they do after work, but it is their own initiative and they do not get paid for it by their company.

Another case is the business school which decided to develop a CD Rom and some video-conferencing for the biggest retailer in Denmark. This time the whole initiative came from the company and is in-work training. Therefore it is like a new partnership between the business school and the retailer and a new concept for students.

There are three challenges, at least in Denmark. The first is to use all the existing knowledge and experiences that we have from other projects that have been developed throughout the years. Institutions have a big opportunity of building partnerships between the different sectors of industry and the education sector. We as a whole, as a society, have an obligation to change or to try to build new systems or to build more adapted systems, because they of course have to change more rapidly now.

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