VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING STRUCTURES

Abstract

Globalization and ICT revolution are two key factors that are transforming the traditional university. In answer to new social, economic and labor conditions, the University is adopting more flexible teaching concepts for a changing world. Thus, the increasing necessities of continuous formation have required the implementation of innovative educative strategies. Among these proposals, distance learning, using more flexible models and with increased technological support, has become a highly demanded option, especially by a sector of professionals who require updates and specialization of their education. The design, development and implementation of hybrid educative proposals (e-learning, b-learning, mobile-learning, etc.) has become an emergent specialty in both the academic and corporate environments. Lately, this movement provoked the specialization of actors in conception and design of training of formation proposals. The latter are construed as devices, that is integrated results of all the components required for the operation: administrative, academic physical and human resources. Under this setting, two fields of activity have appeared: “formation engineering” is concerned whit the design of a formation device in all its dimensions (political, economic, social, methodological and technical); “pedagogical engineering” is a more specialized field, concerned whit the educational-learning processes themselves. We hope in this work to provide teachers of diverse specialties whit conception and design tools for building, from a systemic vision, formation devices within a formal teaching-learning systems framework.