When Britain first
introduced the penny post in 1840, Isaac Pitman started offering a
correspondence course in shorthand. It was the beginning of a new method
of education: distance education.
Less than two hundred years later, the new wave of education is riding on
the exponential ways technology is being used to transmit information.
Distance education has gone digital, making knowledge more accessible than
ever.
Pitman Training is one of Britain's largest providers of IT,
Office, Book-Keeping and Business Skills training. And won the silver
award for UK's Best Learning Centre in The National IT Training Awards!
Located
in High Holborn, Notting Hill and Paddington, London. Pitman Training
operates in two ways:
Pitman shorthand course in malaysia:
1) study at your own pace using a PC, audio track and workbook, or
2) enjoy one of the open seminars at training centers.
Today's knowledge explosion is propelled by the fact that education is
seen as the birthright of all and sundry. What was once elitist is now
increasingly democratized, leading to rapid growth of educational
providers worldwide. In making education radically accessible, technology
also holds the promise of dramatically reducing educational costs. The
cost of storing and transmitting information via online technology is
falling compared to the rising costs of traditional education. Larger
volumes of people now have access to a wider platform of knowledge
resources.
"People are hungry for
knowledge, especially in developing countries," says Prof Ansary Ahmed,
Senior Vice President, Open University Malaysia (OUM). "Open and distance
learning (ODL) provides an affordable option for them to gain quality
higher education."
OUM has always positioned itself as a global educational provider in view
of the increasing demand for higher education. The university first made
inroads to other countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and
Maldives by providing customized
professional courses to them through the international arm of its
Institute of Professional Development (IPD) unit.
In 2003, OUM International was formally set up with the task of developing
strategies to cater to the educational needs of other countries. The unit
is a one stop centre for international contacts, working in concert with
the university's IPD unit, faculties and affiliations with 11 national
universities. The combination provides a comprehensive pool of
educational, developmental and human resources, which contributes towards
making Malaysia a centre of educational excellence in the region.
"Institutions of higher education are now facing more demands for
accountability and are seen as contributing factors of a country's GDP,"
notes Prof Ansary. "ICT has also changed today's education, making it
imperative for academic institutions to re-engineer themselves."
"They have to look beyond traditional setups and exercise flexibility to
keep up with global changes to remain relevant and sustainable in a
knowledge-based economy."
Transportability of learning credits has also paved the way for
cross-border higher education providers like OUM. Cross-border higher
education is described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), in their Guidelines for Quality
Provision in Cross Border Higher Education as "higher education that takes
place when students follow a course or programme of study that has been
produced, and is continuing to be maintained, in a country different from
the one in which they are residing."
Cross-border higher education entails an
acceptance of national borders, thus implying recognition of the roles and
responsibilities of national governments within their jurisdictions, not
only for deciding who to let into their country but also for overseeing
the national higher education system. This helps in creating guidelines
for quality assessment of cross-border higher education.
Incidentally, OUM is assessed by UNESCO
as one of the world's best ODL institutions and is UNESCO's Asia Pacific
host. OUM is widely considered as a notable ODL model and numerous
universities from other countries have visited OUM to study its ODL
processes.
To date, OUM has signed MoUs and MoAs with 25 institutes of higher
learning from countries such as the UK, France, Australia, Indonesia,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Yemen. Egypt, Bangladesh, Korea, and Sudan.
The university's first Regional Learning Centre (RLC) is based in the
Middle East at the University of Science & Technology, Sana'a, in Yemen.
Its second RLC is Universitas Riau in Pekan Baru, Sumatra, Indonesia. OUM
has signed at least five MoUs with institutes of higher education in
Indonesia alone. Its third RLC is Arab Open University in Manama, Bahrain.
From Bahrain, OUM has extended its reach to include Saudi Arabia and
Egypt.
OUM offers mostly post-graduate courses overseas,
especially in Business Administration and
IT. The university plans to offer selected undergraduate courses in
certain countries, depending on demand. According to Prof Ansary,
technology access, allied infrastructure, level of education and English
language proficiency are factors that determine the launch rates of the
courses.
Currently, OUM hosts 200 international students, most of them from the
Middle East. The university aims to triple the number by the end of 2007.
OUM also plans to open learning centres in Singapore, Libya, Oman,
Pakistan, Vietnam, China, and India.
On the local front, OUM is offering twinning programmes with France for
postgraduate courses in Competitive Intelligence and IT, in addition to
its usual variety of courses, which totals 47 between five faculties. The
university also plans to create similar programmes for undergraduate and
postgraduate courses in Nursing with the University of South Africa
(UNISA). UNISA is an ODL institution that has run nursing programmes for
30 years and is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) for
postgraduate nursing. |
Open University Malaysia
(OU Malaysia) was established in August 2000 under the Private Higher
Education Act 1996. Backed by the 11 public universities in the country,
OU Malaysia is set to create opportunities for Malaysians to fulfill their
academic aspirations through our “education for all” concept. If you
possess strong customer and achievement oriented competencies, able to
work well in a team and have a strong desire to make things happen, you
could be the individual OUM is looking for to work and progress
with.
