Remarks by President McAleese at the European Distance and E-Learning Network (Eden) 2011 Conference
O'Reilly Hall, UCD, Monday, 20th June, 2011
Dia dhibh a cháirde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisúir dom bheith i lathair anseo ar maidin.
It gives me great pleasure to address the twentieth anniversary conference of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN), which we are honoured to be hosting here in Dublin this year. I’d like to thank Dr. András Szűcs for his kind invitation to address you here today and to join your twentieth anniversary celebrations.
Dublin is certainly a good choice of location for EDEN to mark twenty years of sharing knowledge and improving understanding amongst professionals in distance and e-learning. Here in Ireland our tradition of distance learning and indeed scholarly learning networks goes back a little further, arguably to the first millennium and to the Irish monks who spread the Christian gospel and literacy throughout Europe in the dark ages! But with advancing technologies, obviously dispatching learned monks with ancient manuscripts may no longer be the most efficient way to share information. We are grateful to EDEN for providing guidance and advice on best practice and policy in this vital area of knowledge dissemination.
The American philosopher Eric Hoffer once said “in times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Life-long learning and lifelong unlearning have become the true measure of an educated person. The provision of flexible, accessible learning opportunities spanning all levels of education and all ages, has become a necessity and a challenge. EDEN has made a huge contribution in that regard and on a pan-European basis. Through your conferences, publications, and information services, as well as through your involvement in a wide range of European projects and policy initiatives, you have overseen the transformation and development of distance and e-learning from the pre-internet era to today’s exciting new interactive technologies. I see this new culture grow from the ground up in the school classrooms I visit where with the touch of a whiteboard children in Ireland can share a class project with children in Spain, or go live to the Serengeti, or access on-line libraries and encyclopaedias. I see it in the video-conferenced virtual lectures that open us up to the wisdom of scholars living and working many thousands of miles away on this earth or in space.
Our communication and information access capabilities have been revolutionised and the revolution is still only in its opening chapters. But already the impact of the internet and broadband has transformed the landscape of the possible in higher education. The modes of delivery have multiplied, the range, depth and ease of access to resources is phenomenal. Customised, finely-tuned education specifically tailored to the individual learner is a possibility now in ways that would have been impossible a few short years ago. Which of us can say where future technology advances will bring us to? Yet we have to probe that future in order to be prepared for it and that is why this conference is so important.
E-learning is a key element of the broader shift towards greater flexibility and responsiveness in the delivery of higher education. In recent years Irish higher education institutions have invested significantly in the development of e-learning through the establishment of teaching and learning centres, educational technology units and the development of technological infrastructure and virtual learning environments. Last year I had the honour to see at first hand the immense possibilities opened by e-learning when I attended the graduation ceremony of the first students to achieve a B.A. in Visual Arts on Sherkin Island. For those not familiar with the area, Sherkin is a tiny island off the south Atlantic coast of Ireland. It sits in an area called Roaringwater Bay, which may give you some hint of the challenges inherent in delivering a full undergraduate degree programme on a small and remote island! But with vision, ingenuity and technology, the islanders and the Dublin Institute of Technology translated this from a lofty idea to a successful reality. I know you will hear more later about that and other ground-breaking initiatives in distance and e-learning that are transforming the future and the horizons of Irish Higher Education.
The vision of those who founded the EDEN organisation in 1991 was precisely to bring this kind of radical and real innovation to learning, inside and outside the formal sphere of colleges and professional education. The term ‘open’, when applied to learning, underpins two key values: education should be open and adaptable, designed to suit the pace and place of the learner; it should also be open and inclusive, providing educational pathways for persons previously excluded. Formats and structures that served generations of higher education students well in the past are now under pressure to conform to very new economic and technological realities that are becoming more like imperatives. Ireland’s ambition to be an advanced ‘knowledge economy’ is directly linked to how our higher education institutions thrive in a virtual environment that is increasingly characterized by open access to knowledge and it depends too on how well they provide for the harnessing and harvesting of the best natural resource we have which is our people’s brain power and skill.
The future cannot be a place of educational or knowledge poverty or of hard-to-reach individuals or communities cut off from mainstream opportunities for education and training. Equality of opportunity demands what technology can now increasingly deliver – a variety of ways to learn and to train, full-time, part-time, on-campus, off-campus, classroom-based, home-based, work-based at your desk, term-time learning, weekend learning, summer time learning, distance and e-learning and a growing list of permutations and possibilities that grow by the day. Ireland’s National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030 envisions all of that and more.
Champions of that imagined future are essential if it is to be a destination reached and we are grateful to EDEN for its role as an advocate in policy development, implementation and the sharing of best practices throughout Europe and, now, worldwide. 20 years ago when EDEN started a lot of what we now take for granted was beyond our contemplation. As the technologies for supporting learning have advanced, we have needed your steady advice and guidance. As our children hold in their hands tiny little machines that allow them to access the world and the world to access them around the clock and around the globe, we know and hope that the best is yet to come. The greener, smarter economy Ireland desires for itself and for the rest of the world may not just be a mouse click away but it is becoming more attainable with the credible and trustworthy use of new technologies and applications.
Yet there are limits to e-learning and distance-learning, there are limits to virtual social networking for in terms of building up friendships and networks of common endeavour they still cannot match the handshake, the shared lunch, the face-to-face engagement, mutual encouragement and inspiration that this conference is about. During these few days in Dublin you will have much to discuss and much important work to do, but it is my hope that you will also have the time to renew old friendships, forge new ones and relish each other’s company as you sketch out your vision for our learning future.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir agus rath Dé ar an obair.