Traditional and On-line Universities: A Partnership for the Present and the Future of Education

(International Telematic University Uninettuno, Italy)

Abstract: Internet has evolved into global platform ever richer in content and is becoming the prevailing infrastructure for the exchange of knowledge between people. The generations of new students, the digital natives, will no longer do unless you use the network to develop knowledge and skills. The transformation of the University is really happening.

New technologies allow a direct connection between the university and the user, by means of a simple PC, a tablet or a smart phone: lessons, multimedia products, databases, self-assessment systems, exams organisation and other training materials can be quickly forwarded and this promotes collaborative learning processes inside dynamic virtual environments. In the “virtual” classrooms, it is possible to reproduce teaching-learning activities as it happens in actual classrooms, but it is also possible to significantly increase the amount of information and start up multiple interactions in real time among individuals belonging to different cultural levels, having different traditions and experience and coming from educational environments of different countries of the world.

Today, strengthening cooperation among academic institutions of different countries of the world, jointly developing Internet-based training contents is an issue of utmost importance from a strategic, cultural, political and economic perspective. The production of Internet-based educational contents by lecturers coming from the best universities allow to develop a quality e-learning model and promotes the cultural and industrial development of a society based on Knowledge Economy.

Through the analysis of the psyco-pedagogic model introduced by the International Telematic University UNINETTUNO, this paper aims at arguing that the creation of a global network for Higher Education in which teachers and students from different parts of the world participate in the collaborative construction of knowledge is not a utopia. Indeed, it can be a cure to bring a new vitality to the University by featuring them on the global networked economy.

Key words: on-line universities, psycho-pedagogic model, virtual learning environments