Press room
[15/12/2007]
Interview with Rob Abel
“The universities with students at a distance are more innovative”
The UOC has recently joined IMS Global Learning Consortium, a global, non-profit, member association that aims to enhance learning worldwide through the use of technology and provide leadership in shaping and growing the learning and educational technology industries. Rob Abel, IMS Chief Executive Officer, has been in Barcelona to attend the opening ceremony of the University Campus Conference and contribute with his experience to the Campus Project, the pioneering initiative that will enable the Catalan universities to construct their virtual campuses using free software.
[03/10/2007]
Interview with Larry Johnson
“In five years, we will be debating how real should Second Life be”
Dr Larry Johnson is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), a group of more than 250 colleges, universities, technology companies and world-leading museums interested in the intersection of emerging technology and learning. The Consortium aims to serve as a catalyst for the development of new applications to energise learning and creative expression, and sponsors programmes and activities designed to stimulate innovation. One particular example of this effort are the 85 islands that the NMC has on Second Life, where universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) take their first steps in the virtual world.
[03/09/2007]
Interview with Interview with Alain Touraine
“After the industrial society we are going from a society of tools to a society of language”
Professor Alain Touraine, Director of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, was appointed Honorary Doctor by the UOC in June. A benchmark for scholars in terms of interpreting twentieth-century models of society in Europe and Latin America, Touraine received this doctorate in recognition of his extensive intellectual career and his scientific production in the field of the social sciences. He is especially outstanding for his contribution to the analysis of the post-industrial society and for a sociological theory focused on the subject as the primary source of social action.
[27/06/2007]
Interview with Ricardo Galli
The Internet contains millions of blogs, and hanging from every single are numerous articles, some of them brilliant, others trivial. The question is how do you filter the most interesting without reading the rest. A year and a half ago, Ricardo Galli, IT lecturer at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), came up with the answer, namely Meneame.net, a website to which anyone can send a piece of news and anyone can "menear" (recommend) it or advise against it. Depending on these opinions, it will strike it lucky and make its way up to the site?s homepage or, to the contrary, fall into oblivion.
[20/06/2007]
Interview with Felice Dassetto
“There is pluralism in Islam in Europe”
Felice Dassetto was born in Italy in 1941, but lives in Belgium, where he has been a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven since 1998. An expert in Islam in Europe, Dassetto has specialised in the social anthropology of Islam in the continent, researching aspects as complex as the symbolic religious systems or the relationship between the elite and Muslim immigrants. He is the founder and coordinator of the Bibliographic and Documental Network on Immigration and Director of the 'Musulmans d'Europe' collection for the French publisher L'Harmattan.
[01/06/2007]
Interview with Interview with Lila Pastoriza and Eduardo Jozami
Historical memory, search for the truth, oblivion or justice are expressions that are spoken and heard in many places, from Spain to Rwanda, from Vietnam to Chile. The journalists and human rights activists Lila Pastoriza and Eduardo Jozami, involved in the task of the recovery of memory in Argentina, spoke in Barcelona on their careers and experience in this field, at the invitation of the UOC and Casa América. Likewise, they presented the book Rodolfo Walsh. La palabra y la acción, of which Jozami is the author, on the thirtieth anniversary of the disappearance of the journalist and writer.
[01/05/2007]
Interview with Interview with Alejandro Piscitelli
“The disappointment that the second Internet bubble will cause will be more political than economic”
In 2003, Alejandro Piscitelli took on the challenge of relaunching educ.ar, a portal promoted by the Argentine government that is committed to the use of ICTs as a weapon against the education problems suffered by the country. A philosopher, university lecturer and author of numerous books and blogs reflecting on the digital age, he took part in a panel discussion at the UOC: “educ.ar for the 2.0 school: computing and the Internet for the masses – technology demystified”. Piscitelli spoke of the education of the so-called “digital natives” and gave an in-depth look at the One Laptop per Child project, the initiative by Nicholas Negroponte to take a laptop computer to every school desk in the world.
[01/05/2007]
Interview with Interview with Martin Kaplan
Professor Martin Kaplan speaks passionately about the power of entertainment in the twenty first century, ranging from the final instalment of the Sopranos to Greek tragedies, from the speeches of the Bush government to South American TV soaps and football. For this communications expert, even our lives are mere entertainment: a story that we tell day after day and during which we dream of reaching the next chapter.
[01/05/2007]
Interview with Interview with Brenda Gourley, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University
Professor Brenda Gourley is the Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, the first distance university launched almost forty years ago now in Great Britain. Today this University boasts the largest student community in the world, a community that in addition interacts by creating work groups, seminars or facilitating learning in common. The Open University holds more than thirty-six graduation events, most of them in the same country, but also in cities such as Moscow or Singapore. At the end of April, the Vice-Chancellor of the Open University visited the UOC in order to sign a collaboration agreement and to talk of new joint projects.
[03/04/2007]
Interview with Interview with Peter MacIntyre
“Nothing can stop the willingness to maintain a language alive”
Peter MacIntyre has studied the motivations that lead many people to learn and use a second language. The economic benefits that derive from this are, to the mind of this Canadian Professor of Psychology, simply the most prosaic part of the issue. Some very good motives to study another language are, for instance, learning to be tolerant with other cultures, or to regain one’s own lost identity. This March, Professor MacIntyre took part in the presentation of the Linguamón Chair, jointly created by La Casa de les Llengües (The House of Languages) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).
[01/04/2007]
Interview with Imma Tubella
“We have to make the move from a great project to a great university”
Dr Imma Tubella heralds in a new era at the head of the UOC, succeeding Gabriel Ferraté, the founding rector of this institution that has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. During these first few months, Dr Tubella, an expert in audiovisual communication and former professor at the university, has set the objectives for 2006, the basic principles of which are to make the move from a great project to a great university and to become a point of reference for academic and research quality in Catalonia, whilst looking towards Europe. Without ruling out the possible expansion of the UOC, Dr Tubella stated that she would only support growth that did not have a negative effect on quality and that did not lose sight of the character of a university rooted in Catalonia.
[20/03/2007]
Interview with Santiago de la Mora
“Google Book Search can help libraries and publishers to attain their objectives”
In yet another step forward towards its mission of organising the information and making it accessible, Google launched the world's greatest book digitalisation project. More than 10,000 publishers and 13 libraries have already joined this initiative. An initiative that some consider controversial. Santiago de la Mora, Strategic Account Manager for Google Search in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, took part in the seminar "The Future of the Book", organised by the Internet colossus and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
[01/02/2007]
Interview with Interview with Anastasia Natsina
Anastasia Natsina is the author of the article "Teaching Literature in Open and Distance Teaching: A Comparative Study of Literary Teaching in Nine European Universities", to be published in the Arts and Humanities in Higher Education journal of June 2007. She has relied on the collaboration of the OpenLit research team from the Humanities School at the Open Hellenic University (www.openlit.gr), under the academic guidance of Takis Kayalis. Natsina took part in the Literary Studies in the European Framework: Looking Ahead seminar held at the UOC last December.
[01/01/2007]
Interview with Imma Tubella, rector of the UOC
"This year we have built the foundations that we wanted"
A year has passed since the change in the governing body of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Open University of Catalonia). A new team, with the rector, Imma Tubella, at its head, began a new period and, in her own words at the time, they wanted to make the step from a great project to a great university.
[01/01/2007]
Interview with Interview with David Wiley
“Open content is incredibly powerful advertising for universities”
Some time ago people began exchanging software, which they called free software or open source software. In 1998, the idea arose to create the equivalent of open source software but not for IT, for education. It was called open content and David Wiley, professor in Utah State University's Instructional Technology Department, has been one of the driving forces. A few weeks ago, he took part in the 3rd International Seminar, entitled Open Educational Resources: Institutional Challenges, organised by the UOC's Unesco Chair in E-Learning.
[01/09/2006]
Interview with Ahmed El Moussaoui
“I am interested in the solutions that e-learning offers for developing countries”
Ahmed El Moussaoui has been vice-rector of Morocco's Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi (UAE) since 1994. He has long been aware of the importance of information and communication technology (ICT). Before taking up his current position, he worked as a professor of microwave electronics, specifically modelling language circuits.
[01/07/2006]
Interview with Susan d'Antoni
“Using open content is a factor for change at universities”
The Canadian Susan d'Antoni considers herself fortunate. Early in her career she visited UNESCO and impressed with the vision and the work being undertaken, she decided "This is where I will plan to end my career". She has been living in the French capital since 1991 and working at the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) since 1995. She is one of the experts in new technologies and education at this worldwide organisation that is part of the UN. D'Antoni heads the IIEP Virtual Institute.
[01/06/2006]
Interview with William Mitchell
“I always keep an eye on the appearance of new technologies and the possibilities they generate”
William Mitchell was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in June 2006 at a ceremony that also honoured the former President of the Generalitat (the Catalan regional government), Jordi Pujol. Mitchell is professor of Architecture and a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his field of study involves a number of research projects.
[01/06/2006]
Interview with William H. Dutton
“E-learning is not a substitute for face-to-face communication”
The vice-rector of Research of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Eduard Aibar, and the director of the Oxford Internet Institute, William Dutton, signed a collaboration agreement in the first half of June. This agreement will allow for the setting up of a distance PhD course to be given by Dutton and professor Manuel Castells, with student exchanges and joint research projects.
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