By Prof. Umberto Sulpasso

The information revolution we experience today is eliminating time, distance and geography as barriers to communication and market competitivity. It is also increasingly reducing the gap between the producer and the consumer in many fields of economic activity but the impact of this revolution in the field of education is potentially phenomenal, especially in the realm of higher education. Believe it or not but its true: You can remain at your residence and have access to seminars and courses given by experts the world over. You can improve your professional skills by utilizing interactive multimedia products without even being a computer expert. You can increase your knowledge-base by logging on to the internet and entering the world wide web. You can simultaneously train hundreds of your employees residing in different parts of the world, at around one fourth of your traditional training costs, without even moving them from their place of work. Knowledge is no longer the privilege of a few and cost is no longer an obstacle to acquiring it. And all this is thanks to the latest developments in interactive information technology and the creation of the information superhighways. We have truly entered the information age at the turn of the century.

We are all well aware that the activity of providing higher education and training will constitute an ever growing share in global economic activities in the next decades and that the phenomenal potentialities of IT have made it a powerful tool in the transmission of knowledge, especially for distance education. It is also evident that the application of multimedia for educational activities hasn't, so far, been really successful. I think that the two main reasons for this are:

1. that as products of the software industry, multimedia products are conceived outside the academic tradition and therefore they lack formal authority;
2. as products of educational institutions, multimedia products are only marginally applied for distance education programmes which usually re-duplicate, in cheaper versions, the very same contents of traditional courses.

It was these factors that inspired me to establish a university- the International Multimedia University (IMU) last year, in 1997; a university that applies a new pedagogic methodology for the utilization of the latest information technologies in the field of distance education. This university is situated in a "network of six castles" in Umbria, the "Green Heart" of Italy, that are the seats of the different departments of the University. The region of Umbria, Public Sector Corporations (like ENEL: the Italian National Power Corp. and RAI : the Italian National Broadcasting Corp.) and some SME's are the major shareholders of the University. The university was conceived as one whose professors would be the world's best academics and professionals and whose students would be residents from each corner of the world; a university where courses and curricula would be so designed and organized that these world class experts could simultaneously teach people living in the different continents of the world.

Doesn't this seem to be a dream? Well! It was but we are making it come true in the International Multimedia University. We have created a new and innovative pedagogic methodology that is, for the first time, utilizing the potentialities of new information technologies for distance education; a methodology that, we believe, is needed in order to "channelize" the new potentialities of this new media. This process is altogether different from the process of developing a new technology and it has required fresh investments, innovative choices and inventive thinking. In fact, we had to start from an understanding of those requirements of the educational processes that could be better served through new technologies in order to identify our niche in the market. Since we feel that the basic requirement for education is personal interactivity, we are using IT to enhance it, not to substitute it; to expand the usual classroom interactivity in ways that transcend space and time constrictions, not to replace it.

The fundamental characteristics of the pedagogic methodology that we have developed are:

• A novel curricula structure

A curricula that proposes a combination of residential on-sight classrooms and the utilization of on-line and off-line technology, in time frames and week schedules that are flexible and adaptable to the specificity of each programme and to the exigencies of its students; a curricula structure that integrates, in each programme, the knowledge on global economic and cultural trends with local professional and market exigencies; a structure that is flexible to include, besides conceptual knowledge requirements, also sector-specific and country-specific needs.

• New courses that contain new technical content.

These include highly specialized courses that respond to the existing market demand in higher education and those that focus on new specializations. Both kinds of courses are being created, re-designed, adapted and shaped to suit the specific needs of distance education imparted through new information technologies; courses different from traditional University courses in the composition of faculty teams, in content and in their pedagogic methodology. The faculty teams include different combinations of expert groups, organizations, universities and individuals belonging to different economic and cultural contexts. This combination is determined by the requirements of "customers" which are a group of companies or individual organizations, local or trans-national. The contents of these courses include:

1. traditional subjects that require new teaching techniques and content presentation,
2. innovative subjects (for ex: new technologies in industry, agriculture, environment, etc., new economic phenomena) that require a team of experts which cannot be brought together by traditional academic organizations or which require the combined competence of experts who cannot move from their distant work places or residence.

• The creation of a concentration of knowledge within one university structure as never before.

IMU has access to a network of institutions, experts and their teaching material in all possible fields of education. The very nature of IMU permits different educational structures (universities, research organizations, professional institutions, experts, etc.) to pool in their resources simultaneously without physically moving from their base and from places of residence or work. These provide a rich knowledge base which is the principle resource for the educational activities of the university and which are integrated within the curricula created by the university.

• Increase in the speed with which new curriculum can be put together.

In a world where the only certainty is the certainty of more change, the speed with which one answers new market exigencies and the flexibility with which one adapts oneself to change become indispensable factors of success. IMU's organizational and academic structure is such that general and specialized courses can be formalized and delivered, with high quality content, with a speed inconceivable within the structure of traditional universities.

• An innovative methodology of knowledge exchange amongst its world wide customers.

This is made possible through the structure of and within the courses of IMU through common project work, group discussions, video conferencing and first hand experience of different economic contexts and companies part of the extended network of the university.

• Creation of innovative educational products to be used for and distributed through the university's courses; products made by the University or certified by it (i.e. made by its network of experts and specialized companies).

IMU has already executed a Two-Phase Specialization Course for Multimedia Operators that began in 1997 and is now in its second phase. Three courses will begin from September 1998: i) Public and Private Management , ii) Communications Management, iii) Global Management. The September programmes will be formulated and executed in collaboration with UCLA- USA. Many other courses are in the pipeline and will begin in 1999.

I think it would be opportune, at this point, to reaffirm that the pedagogic methodology of IMU is based on the premise that information technologies can be considered tools and not teachers. The key factors of traditional education are that the teacher and student should be situated in the same place and that only single institutions have the authority and the responsibility of defining curricula and administering them. Distance education has partially modified only the first factor. The communication potentialities of information technologies permit us, as I said earlier, to overcome space and time barriers, facilitate the simultaneous multiple use of the source, fast consultation of indexes and eliminate the time lapse between the choice of the source and its fruition. IMU intends to modify the second key factor. IMU, however, neither intends to substitute the role and need for traditional universities nor to reproduce as distance education programmes, the already existing university courses.

The university is also not an arena for selling, at a distance, the usual University products. The present distance learning programmes of universities that use new information technologies just to repeat traditional courses are, in my opinion, taking the wrong path and are bound to fail. History has shown us that new technology has always promoted new forms of education and has never substituted the old ones. It has also demonstrated that when technology is not used to communicate a renovated content, i.e., when old content is just transferred to new technology, it is bound to fail. One such example is the failure of the video and its limited application in the field of education. It failed because it did not utilize new contents and new teaching techniques and remained faithful to the old ones. I strongly believe that new technology is successful only when it helps communicate a new content. And Gutenberg’s printing press is a historical validation of my statement. It did not substitute manuscripts but created, instead, a new kind of demand. This is quite evident even in the phenomenon of the "Daily", the newspapers, its widespread diffusion and its continuing popularity that is due to its new communication content.

The pedagogic methodology of IMU is also firmly rooted in the underlying vision of the University which is:

• to create an academic and entrepreneurial context suitable for the promotion of new methodologies of applying interactive information technology in higher education.

The logic of the university is based upon the notion that true "interactivity" does not qualify any "product", but refers to the human relationship that lies at the roots of any significant communication. The process of education, a special kind of communication, is characterized by the acceptance, by the learner, of the authority of the teacher. Such an acceptance, to be meaningful, has to take place in a context where this authority is questioned and verified. Without such a context of free interactivity, the pieces of information received will not become an integral part of the "vision of the world" of the learner. The integration of new kinds of knowledge in this "vision of the world" is however indispensable for the process of memorization which, in human mind, does not take place in a "storage room" existing outside the unitary image of reality, an image that the person builds on her/his own through education and experience. In fact, even while utilizing the interactive potentialities of the applications of new information technologies, we do not intend to substitute the normal interactions of campuses, including sports, political discussions, dating, etc., with the "interactivity" of these technologies but to create a new methodology of varying combinations of the two teaching methods.

• To promote an authoritative forum for an independent critical authority on multimedia educational products: a forum that is needed by the market and not provided by it.

It is the aim of IMU to act as a catalyst in order to create the qualified environment of international collaboration which is needed in order to develop the educational potentialities of multimedia products. It shall also be a forum where the question of criticism of multimedia can be openly debated and where the best critical approaches can be recognised, acclaimed and become standard models to be imitated and be challenged by successive criticism.

The most important question to be resolved in order to "qualify" a multimedia educational product concerns the "criteria" of misuse of the educational "quality" of a multimedia product. Viewed from a purely commercial perspective, the question of "quality" is subject to the extent of "demand" for a certain product; outside institutional considerations. It is easy to succumb to the temptation of utilizing multimedia only to make learning appear "easier" and "funnier" (thanks for instance to nice graphics, exciting animations, and the possibility of consuming the products at ease in one's own home and in convenient times) and forget to focus on the educational "efficacy" of the product. Such an "efficacy" cannot be judged by the user himself/herself, as s/he is evidently ignorant of the educational issues s/he aims at becoming aware of. Nor can such a "mark" of "educational quality" be given by entities that make the products since their commercial interests will not permit the impartiality required for such a judgement. A tradition of independent academic criticism of educational multimedia is therefore needed in order to qualify the multimedia products. Without such criticism it will be impossible to certify the authority of a "multimedia courses.

There is another issue for which the development of the educational potentialities of multimedia require specialized high level academic authority; and that is the question of resources to be invested for the development of educational demand. Development of education in fact is based on the choice to renounce to immediate consumption for investing in the regeneration of human resources. Education is not a commodity whose market is better served by leaving it to the spontaneous demand: social choices are needed for cultural investments and these choices require open debate and widespread communication. Therefore the development of such demand needs an academically qualified and a politically independent forum debating the issue of how information technology applications can enhance the value of investments in human resources.

IMU will derive its academic and professional strength, to achieve its objectives and sustain its novel methodology, from a faculty belonging to the world's leading institutions and universities. The first such leading university to have understood the potentialities of IMU and to support this new approach is the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States. Situated in the heart of the Silicon Valley, the UCLA is a public funded university and one of the leading ones of the United States. UCLA’s autonomous and neutral character and its impeccable reputation for providing world class courses in all fields, integrated with the innovative methodology of IMU will together make them a pioneer in new and successful forms of distance education. UCLA will be an important partner of IMU for developing, shaping and validating the structure and content of the courses for distance education and for verifying standards of instruction and instructor quality.

The particularity of the new interactive information technologies, as we said earlier, is its real-time fruibility in a world-wide context. The implications of these potentialities have yet to be understood by many intellectuals and teachers. Managers are beginning to understand and exploit multimedia potentialities because their specificity can be more easily exploited by trainers rather than by teachers. It is the intention of IMU to demonstrate the potentialities and efficiency of these technologies even in the field of higher education and the methodology of their utilization by teachers too.

I believe that for the next 10-15 years, the world shall witness a multiplication of initiatives in the field of distance education. These initiatives will have to resolve two problems in their efforts to achieve success:

1. the pedagogic technique for renovating communication through the new information technologies; and
2. the technical content of the new products.

The International Multimedia University is a response to the second problem of developing new content and related technologies. The first problem still remains unsolved and there are no a-priori methods and answers for it. Experience and practical application of new information technologies will pave the way and demonstrate the solutions to us. The challenge of the 21st century, I feel, is to create and identify new contents and new pedagogic techniques for the utilization of these technologies in higher education. IMU has taken up this challenge and it aims at becoming an example of a successful venture.