Australian professor to lead international distance education body

As reported at -

http://www.cch.com.au/fe_news.asp?document_id=28075&topic_code=9


A professor from the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has been elected President of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE).

Professor Jim Taylor is Deputy Vice-Chancellor responsible for Global Learning Services at USQ, and was awarded the inaugural ICDE Individual Prize in 1999 for significant contributions to research and development in the field of open and distance education.

The ICDE works with teachers to develop capacity and quality in technology-enhanced learning. The organisation was founded in 1938 and is officially recognised by the United Nations as the global non-governmental organisation responsible for the field of open and distance learning. It is affiliated with the United Nations through UNESCO and its global membership covers 142 countries.

The Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson, said that Professor Taylor's appointment will focus greater international attention on the quality of open and distance education in Australia and on the leading work our educators have done in developing online learning.

USQ has been a leader in online learning in Australia. It has had 25 years' experience in distance education, and 75% of its students study off-campus in more than 60 countries. The university was awarded the Institutional Prize of Excellence by the ICDE in 1999 for a dual mode institution. The award recognised "the university's very significant contribution to providing education at a distance to the world" and "its leadership and innovation in the field of distance learning, while at the same time maintaining a thriving traditional on-campus operation".

 

"Univcersity of Southern Queensland has been a leader in online learning in Australia. It has had 25 years' experience in distance education..."

We've talked about fortuitous name changes elsewhere. When I spoke on their campus years ago, they were the Darling Downs Institute.

 

... and from some perspectives they still are. This change took place is the "Dawkins" era when the Institutes and Colleges of Avanced Education became 'Universities' and degree granting [ultimately] in their own right. A big chnage for the teaching staff as they found themsleves supposed to be academics.

Their programs are good and I have to do with them in a joint delivery proposal at one place where I was the Director of Studies, and also indirectly through a recent JV engineering proposal in another country.

They have a market and do well in it, but there is clearly a pecking order, and I prefer to study some 400 KM south of there.

 

The old name had a certain ring to it. I considered USQ seriously at one point and all my contacts with the uni were cordial: e-mails answered quickly, questions dealt with competently, etc. Another uni offered a better program for my needs, as it turned out, but USQ appears to be very good at what they do, and at the kind of good price (for US & Canadian students) one expects from Australian unis.

Peter: at the risk of making somebody somewhere howl, can you give an idea of the "pecking order" of Australian universities as perceived in Australia?

 

An opinion - also depends of the faculty/discipline

1 Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, Adelaide and ANU.

2. Monash, UNE, UNSW, Macquarrie, Flinders, La Trobe, Newcastle

3. Deakin, Swinburne, RMIT, QUT, Curtin, Cowan, Griffith,

4. The rest ...

Many will disagree with me - so what's new?

I'd pick my staff - teachers, accountants, lawyers in this order anyway

 

Thanks Peter. It's interesting to see this, and the top schools as you listed them are pretty much what I had guessed they might be. Mind, the Australian universities I have talked to are in category 4!

 

There is nothing wrong with them e.g. you will find a lot of VUT PhD's as senior faculty at Melbourne, and Woolongong graduates as faculty also at No 1 spots. I have done masters work with VUT people and I would not hesitate to take their students ...

You will find UNE graduates in senior faculty at most universities, but then it originally [from 1938 to 1983 +/-] was part of Sydney, was our first major position on postgraduate DE, has excellent faculty in Arts, Accounting, Education, and attracted a lot of academic staff to study there.

We don't have your hang ups - it doesn't matter all that much, and in my areas it is WHO you studied under that matters academically, and whether the professional bodies accept your results, and all univeristies are regarded equal in that sense, that matters whether you get your professinal license/accreditation etc.

 

Murdoch?

 

Peter: Couldn't agree more. I don't have the hangup about prestige schools, although at one time I did. I got my BA at what was unquestionably a "prestige" college, but I'm not at all sure that the quality of instruction I received there was superior to what I received in less "prestige" degree programs later on. At this point, since career advancement is almost entirely disconnected from any further degrees obtained, I want reasonable academic expectations (neither fluff nor headbreakers), reasonable cost, and civil people to deal with, all in a GAAP institution. Everything else is ornamentation: nice, maybe, but not worth extra money or extra work.

At any rate, what I've seen of Australian university websites has been impressive, and the contact/program personnel have been eager and able to help.

 

Personal experiences could tend to make me biased ... dunno