Friday, November 09, 2007

University Uses Skype to Reach Every Student

Tallina Ülikool, Talinn University (TLU) has done away with old form of lined notebooks and rickety desks and chairs, for teaching classes. The university which is also known as E-Stonia, (I know a quite a lot of university students that would love to be stonia state) they teach classes utilizing, yes the everyday VoIP IP Telephony tool, Skype.
Once the summer holiday destination of Tzars, Estonia is the center of academic activity now, due to the fusion of numerous university and research institutes such as the Tallinn Pedagogical University and the Estonian Academic Library.
Created within the ‘EU Phare’ project, the Masters course taught at this university is a joint program with the Finnish University of Tampere. So what is better about a trans-European collaboration for a trans-European program? Travelling to take some lectures in Finland and elsewhere would have been a big problem for Estonian students, so they used the technology available to solve the problem. If Skype has reduced the distance between friends spread all over the globe, business people in every country big and small, why not use the same for teaching?
Now the professors appear, not behind a lectern, but directly on TV, your computer, on any screen!. Furthermore the sessions are recorded and used for reference. So students do not feel really bad if the miss one lecture, it is easy to catch up!

The article in Italian and in English on CafeBabel

0 comments:

Blog Widget by LinkWithin