Thematic digital universities: a national strategy to generalize the use

of media in higher education

Anne BoyerMINES

Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la rechercheFRANCE

Short overview of the French panorama of higher education

CONTEXT

• 82 universities and several “engineers schools”

• a large range of subjects, from humanities, law or management to mathematics, chemistry, physics, including health sciences

• 1.4 Millions of students, from bachelor’s degree to Phd

SPECIFICITIES

• Some universities are organized in PRESPRES: a kind of federal structure at a local level

• The law LRU (08/10/2007) • autonomy of each university in terms of budget,

human resources management and its real estate property

• impact: each university defines its own digital strategy

The French Ministry for higher education and research policy:

“100% digital for 100% of students”(2009)

A strong wish to support the development of e-learning and e-teaching

SUMMARY

• Presentation of the service MINES

• Focus 1 : Universités Numériques Thématiques• Focus 2 : A national pedagogical web-TV: Canal-U

• Conclusion

Presentation of MINES

MINES IN SHORT

Division of the French ministry for higher education and research, dedicated to development of digital universities by• promoting innovative tools and sharable

methodologies to develop ICT supported pedagogy and distant learning

• generalizing access and formation to e-education for the whole community

• of teachers and • students

MINES IN SHORT

• encouraging mutualisation between universities by supporting a structuring policy and the promotion of standards of interoperability

• supporting distant learning initiatives and structuring the French offer forfor national and international audience

Digital Thematic Universities

THE DTU INITIATIVE

• to design pedagogical pools, viewed as repositories of our digital pedagogical capital

• to provide users with labeled contents

• to support collaborative production and broad diffusion of contents

• to ensure access to the available tools and contents with a high quality of service

NATIONAL PEDAGOGICAL POOLS

• 7 thematic digital universitiesin charge at the national level of a disciplinary field

• Missions:• to manage the coordinated development and the broad

diffusion of thematic digital contents• to produce and disseminate contents of

• various nature: case studies, lessons, exercises, virtual practical works, additional materials to lessons, serious games, etc.

• various formats: pdf, audio, video, interactive …• to certify the digital contents • to disseminate the digital contents via the DTUs’ portals, the

regional portal or the virtual desk of students

health sciences: http://www.unf3s.org

engineer sciences:http://www.unit.eu

law and politic sciences: http://www.unjf.org

economics and management: http://www.aunege.org

environment and sustainable development: http://www.uved.fr

sciences: http://www.unisciel.fr

humanities:

http://www.uoh.fr

STRONG ASPECTSLOM indexing

Scientific labelling of e-contentsTo show what cannot be viewed F2F

– Simulation– Virtual experiments and e-lab– Serious games– Self-assessment

Adaptability, updating and sustainable– Use of an editorial chain(SCENARI)

From the students’point of view

Competitive examination(numerus clausus)• L1 health Grenoble• ECN (UMVF)

Disabled studentsDAEU LSF

French for foreign students:

projet filipe (UNIT)

AROUND THE DTUS

• Transversal workgroups for the promotion of new pedagogical tools, standards to guarantee interoperability, legal questions, etc

• The digital universities portal• http://www.universites-numériques.fr• launched in December 2008• about 30 000 sessions per month

FROM THE STUDENT’S POINT OF VIEW

DATA ABOUT THE WEB PORTAL• More than 20000 resources

– 6700 videos– 9000 lessons– 1200 exercises and self-assessment

• In 35 disciplines – More than 2000 resources in humanities– 11000 in health and sport– 4000 in sciences– About 2000 in environment and sustainable development– About 2000 in engineer sciences– 600 in culture and literature– 600 in law, economics and management

IMPACT

• a larger universality of the resources due to collaborative production of contents by teachers from several universities

• guarantee of the scientific pertinence and reliability of the contents due to labelling of contents by independent specialists of the field

• impact of the collaborative production of common resources : use of common tools and the dissemination of common standards

The Canal-U initiative

A NATIONAL WEB-TV

http://www.canal-u.tv/More than 6 000 video resources

LOM indexed

Editorial channelseditors: DTUsScientifically labelled

Additional ressourcesUTLSAMPHI de la 5…

SOME DATA

Within the 100 best sites(Sciences et Avenirsept. 2010)

SOME DATA

Conclusion

CONCLUSION

• A lot of basic materials, pedagogical tools and digital resources are available

• DTUs provide the French universities with all the key elements to design e-learning formations

• Assistance to teachers is a field to develop• This initiative supported by MESR has now a

maturity which makes it the cornerstone for e-learning development

ONGOING AND FUTURE WORK• Translation of resources in foreign languages

– English, Spanish, Arabic, ….• Creation of an international association:

– eomed• Development of new tools

– for teachers and students– to contextualize resources– to build incrementaly resources (semantic wikis)

• Developement of e-training prototypes– based on DTUs resources

Thank you for your attention !

• The French initiative "Digital Thematic University" leads to the the creation of seven national thematic repositeries of pedagogical resources. They aim at supporting the collaborative creation, production, valorisation and diffusion of multimedia resources in order to enhance the broad use of media in higher education and e-learning. They are in charge of the labelling of the video resources on the national indexed video-library Canal-U. The talk will give an overview of their strategy in this field.